Apple agrees to settle lawsuit, pay $95 million over Siri recording private conversations

Apple agreed to pay $95 million USD (about $137 million CAD) to settle a U.S. class-action lawsuit that alleged the company’s Siri voice assistant regularly recorded private conversations and that the company used that data for targeted ads.

Per Ars Technica, Apple agreed to a proposed settlement in the five-year legal battle and a hearing is set for February 14th to determine if the settlement can be approved. If certified, the iPhone maker will notify all affected customers.

The proposed settlement would see Apple offer up to $20 per Siri-enabled device for any purchases between September 17th, 2014 and December 31st, 2024. Siri-enabled devices include iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, MacBooks, HomePods, some iPods, and Apple TVs. Each customer can submit a claim for up to five devices. Along with the monetary relief, the settlement will ensure Apple permanently deletes Siri recordings it collected prior to October 2019 and publishes a website further explaining the optional ‘Improve Siri’ option and how it stores information from customers who choose to opt in.

Also, as part of the proposed settlement, Apple admitted to no wrongdoing, with the settlement referring to “unintended” Siri activations. The lawsuit stemmed from a 2019 story from The Guardian detailing whistleblower reports about how Siri recorded private conversations. Contractors working for Apple reportedly heard a variety of sensitive information through Siri recordings, including medical information, criminal activity and even sexual encounters.

Many of the accidental recordings came from the Apple Watch and HomePod, where it was easy to trigger Siri through simple actions like raising your wrist or through speech that sounded like the ‘Hey Siri’ wake command. Users allege that the only clues to Siri’s spying were eerily accurate ads for things they recently discussed in private conversations. Apple, however, has denied that it used Siri recordings to facilitate targeted ads.

In a statement to MobileSyrup, an Apple spokesperson said:

“Siri has been engineered to protect user privacy from the beginning. Siri data has never been used to build marketing profiles and it has never been sold to anyone for any purpose. Apple settled this case to avoid additional litigation so we can move forward from concerns about third-party grading that we already addressed in 2019. We use Siri data to improve Siri, and we are constantly developing technologies to make Siri even more private.”

While many are concerned with the possibility of Siri and other digital assistants spying on them, it’s worth noting that there are plenty of other tools companies regularly use to gather information about people for ad targeting. Things like cookies and browser fingerprinting allow companies to track people’s activity across the web and are so pervasive that companies don’t even need to spy on conversations through digital assistants to target people with eerily accurate ads.

Notably, Apple wasn’t the only company facing backlash over its digital assistant. Both Amazon and Google grappled with privacy concerns over their Alexa and Google Assistant software.

Moreover, the proposed settlement may come across as a victory for Apple users, but it’s truly a win for Apple as it would let the company off the hook for a relatively low cost. If the courts certified the class-action and Apple users won, the company could have faced more than $1.5 billion USD (roughly $2.2 billion CAD) in fines under the Wiretap Act alone.

Update Jan. 7th, 2025 at 2:46pm ET: Added a statement from Apple about the settlement.

Source: Ars Technica