Google pays $68M to settle claims its voice assistant spied on users

Google agreed to pay $68 million to settle claims its voice assistant illegally spied on users to, among other things, serve them advertisements, Reuters reports.

Google did not admit wrongdoing in the settlement of the class-action case, which accused the firm of “unlawful and intentional interception and recording of individuals’ confidential communications without their consent and subsequent unauthorized disclosure of those communications to third parties.” The suit further claimed that “information gleaned from these recordings was wrongly transmitted to third parties for targeted advertising and for other purposes.” 

The case centered on “false accepts,” wherein Google Assistant is alleged to have activated and recorded the user’s communications even if they had not intentionally prompted it to do so with a wake word. TechCrunch reached out to Google for comment.

Americans have long suspected that their devices inappropriately spy on them. Those suspicions have led, increasingly, to claims of legal wrongdoing. In 2021, Apple agreed to pay $95 million to settle claims its voice assistant, Siri, had recorded their conversations without a prompt from users.

Google, like other tech giants, has faced other privacy-related litigation in recent years. Last year, the company agreed to pay $1.4 billion to the state of Texas to settle two lawsuits that claimed it had violated the state’s data privacy laws.