Apple to Pay $95 Million to Settle Siri Eavesdropping Lawsuit

Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a class action lawsuit accusing the company of recording private conversations without users’ knowledge via its Siri assistant. According to Reuters, the preliminary settlement, which still needs to be approved by a US District judge, could lead Apple to pay up to $20 per Siri-enabled device to affected users in the US.

The class action lawsuit was originally filed back in 2019, and the class period runs from September 17, 2014, to December 31, 2024. This period starts when Apple implemented the “Hey Siri” feature that allows users of Apple devices to interact with the assistant hands-free.

Plaintiffs claimed that this Siri voice activation feature allowed the company to record their private conversations without their consent and share them with third parties for advertising purposes. “Two plaintiffs said their mentions of Air Jordan sneakers and Olive Garden restaurants triggered ads for those products. Another said he got ads for a brand name surgical treatment after discussing it, he thought privately, with his doctor,” Reuters reported.

To address concerns over contractors listening to conversations that users have with its digital assistant, Apple announced big changes to its Siri data collection practices back in August 2019: The company stopped retaining audio recordings of Siri interactions by default, and it also allowed users to opt in to help Siri improve by learning from the audio samples of their requests. In that case, the company said that only Apple employees would be allowed to listen to audio samples of Siri interactions, with any recording determined to be an inadvertent trigger of Siri to be automatically deleted.

While Apple denied that it did anything wrong in the preliminary settlement, the Reuters report pointed out that the $95 million sum Apple agreed to pay affected individuals in the US represents approximately nine hours of profit for the company. While this will not hurt the Apple’s bottom line, this is definitely bad PR for a company that touts privacy as one of its “core values.”