Apple agrees to pay $95 million – or about 9 hours’ worth – to settle Siri ‘Listen’ case

Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a lawsuit after it was accused of eavesdropping on its virtual assistant Siri.

According to the lawsuit, Siri can be activated accidentally and thus customers’ conversations can be recorded without their consent, and that Apple has violated users’ privacy by sending these recordings to third parties.

as reported by Chronicle of San FranciscoThe class action lawsuit filed in 2019 alleges that the lead plaintiff and her daughter were both recorded without their consent and then served targeted ads on Safari after talking about products including Air Jordans and Olive Garden. Another plaintiff said she received advertisements for a surgical treatment after discussing it privately with her doctor.

In a preliminary settlement filed Tuesday night in federal court in Oakland, California, Apple denied any wrongdoing, including that it “did not record, disclose, or delete conversations recorded as a result of Siri activation” without permission. .

Each claimant, who must be located in the US, could be paid up to $20 per Siri-enabled device between 2014 and 2019. However, the settlement still needs approval from U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in Oakland.

Class members are estimated in the tens of millions, but they are Reuters notes that the $95 million is about nine hours of profit for Apple, whose net income was $93.74 billion in fiscal year 2024.

As part of the settlement, Apple will confirm that it has permanently deleted recordings made before October 2019, and will provide clearer instructions to users who choose to share data for Siri improvements.

In federal court in San Jose, California, there is a similar lawsuit on behalf of users of Google’s Voice Assistant. The plaintiffs are represented by the same law firms as in the Apple case.

Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images.

Wesley is IGN’s UK News Editor. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can contact Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.