Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Apple has agreed to a $95 million settlement with users whose conversations were inadvertently captured by its Siri voice assistant and potentially overheard by human employees. The proposed settlement, reported by Bloomberg, could pay many US-based Apple product owners up to $20 per device for up to five Siri-enabled devices. It still requires approval by a judge.
If approved, the settlement would apply to a subset of US-based people who owned or bought a Siri-enabled iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, MacBook, iMac, HomePod, iPod touch, or Apple TV between September 17th, 2014 and December 31st, 2024. A user would also need to meet one other major criteria: they must swear under oath that they accidentally activated Siri during a conversation intended to be confidential or private. Individual payouts will depend on how many people claim the money, so if you apply, you could end up receiving less than the $20 maximum cap.
The initial class action suit against Apple followed a 2019 report by The Guardian, which alleged Apple third-party contractors “regularly hear confidential medical information, drug deals, and recordings of couples having sex” while working on Siri quality control. While Siri is supposed to be triggered by a deliberate wake word, a whistleblower said that accidental triggers were common, claiming something as simple as the sound of a zipper could wake Siri up. Apple told The Guardian that only a small portion of Siri recordings were passed to contractors, and it later offered a formal apology and said it would no longer retain audio recordings.
The plaintiffs in the Apple lawsuit — one of whom was a minor — claimed their iPhones had recorded them on multiple occasions using Siri, sometimes after they hadn’t uttered a wake word.
Apple wasn’t the only company accused of letting people hear confidential recordings. Google and Amazon also use contractors that listen in on recorded conversations, including accidentally captured ones, and there’s a similar suit against Google pending.