Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a proposed class action lawsuit from 2019 that claimed the Siri virtual assistant was violating user privacy through recording conversations.
Apple has denied any wrongdoing but filed a preliminary settlement in the Oakland, California federal court on Tuesday. The settlement still requires approval by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White, but could potentially mean a payout for tens of millions of Apple users.
An Apple spokesperson told Tom's Guide: "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."
The proposed lawsuit included customers who used a Siri-enabled Apple product between September 17, 2014 and December 31, 2024. That spans almost the entire Apple portfolio from the iPhone and the Mac to the Apple Watch and HomePod smart speaker.
The proposed lawsuit claimed that Apple's devices recorded private conversations after users unintentionally activated Siri. These conversations were then passed on to advertisers.
According to a Reuters report, two plaintiffs claimed mentions of Air Jordan speakers and Olive Garden restaurants triggered adverts for those brands while a third said he was served commercials for surgical treatments after conducting what he thought was a private conversation with his doctor.
The settlement still requires approval, but could potentially mean a payout for tens of millions of Apple users.
According to the suit, the class period began when Apple started using "Hey, Siri" as the voice assistant's trigger phrase back in September 2014. The lawsuit itself arose following reports third-party contractors were used to review recordings in a quality assurance program designed to improve Siri's accuracy.
It was claimed that the program was tasked with working out whether an activation was deliberate or not and whether Siri's response was correct.
Apple suspended the program when the reports began to surface and has so far declined to offer any public comment alongside the settlement. It's worth pointing out that the tactic of manually reviewing recordings to improve digital assistants was also carried out by Amazon and Google.
What does it mean for you?
The settlement will cover any customer using a Siri-enabled product in the time period mentioned above. If that includes you, it could mean you receive a payout of up to $20 payout once the settlement is approved.
Of course, in reality it's likely to be less than that once the lawyers have taken their cut.
According to the Reuters report, the legal team for the plaintiffs can seek up to $28.5 million in fees and $1.1 million for expenses. That would come from the fund and reduce the amount that eventually makes its way to affected users.
There's no current timescale for when the payout could arrive but, it's fair to say, $95 million is a drop in the bucket for Apple which made $94.9 billion in revenue for its fiscal 2024 fourth quarter alone.
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