Google agreed to pay $68 million to settle a U.S. class-action lawsuit accusing its voice assistant of unlawfully intercepting and recording users’ confidential communications without consent, then disclosing them to third parties for targeted advertising, Reuters reports.
The settlement contains no admission of wrongdoing by Google. The lawsuit charged the company with “unlawful and intentional interception and recording of individuals’ confidential communications without their consent and subsequent unauthorized disclosure of those communications to third parties.” Plaintiffs detailed how this process involved capturing private discussions through the Google Assistant feature on devices.
The suit additionally alleged that “information gleaned from these recordings was wrongly transmitted to third parties for targeted advertising and for other purposes.” This transmission enabled third parties to access data derived directly from the intercepted audio, according to the claims.
Central to the case were “false accepts,” situations in which Google Assistant purportedly activated and began recording users’ conversations despite the absence of an intentional wake word prompt, such as “Hey Google” or “OK Google.” These activations occurred unexpectedly during everyday interactions.
TechCrunch contacted Google seeking comment on the settlement details.
Americans have maintained long-standing suspicions that personal devices conduct inappropriate surveillance on their activities. Such concerns have prompted a rise in legal actions asserting violations by technology firms.
In 2021, Apple reached a $95 million settlement over claims that its Siri voice assistant recorded users’ conversations without any prompt from them.
Google has encountered additional privacy litigation recently. Last year, it paid $1.4 billion to the state of Texas to resolve two lawsuits that accused the company of breaching the state’s data privacy laws through mishandling of user information.
