[Apple products. Photo Credit to Pixabay]

Tech giant Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to resolve a class action lawsuit alleging that its devices were listening to individuals through the Siri function without their consent. 

The controversy began in 2019 when The Guardian published a whistleblower report revealing that Apple contractors were reviewing Siri recordings, raising privacy concerns among users.

The claimants allege that voice recordings were provided to advertisers despite Apple's denial of selling Siri data and its assertion that it had reached a settlement to prevent further legal action.

In its defense, Apple emphasizes that Siri data has never been sold to any third party or used to create marketing profiles.

The company’s attorneys have committed to verifying that all individual Siri audio recordings collected before October 2019 have been completely erased.

However, at the heart of the dispute, plaintiffs allege that the tech company inadvertently recorded users who triggered the virtual assistant without saying "Hey, Siri" as intended.

They claim that advertisers could potentially search for keywords within these recordings to better target their advertisements.

One of the key figures in the case, Fumiko Lopez, the principal plaintiff, alleges that both she and her daughter were recorded without their knowledge.

According to their testimony, after discussing items like Nike Air Jordans, they began receiving tailored advertisements.

Under the terms of the settlement, U.S. residents who owned Siri-enabled devices between 2014 and 2019 may be eligible to receive up to $20 per device. 

In this instance, the legal team representing the plaintiffs is expected to receive 30% of the settlement plus costs, amounting to somewhat less than $30 million.

This settlement comes at a time when Apple continues to face legal challenges worldwide.

The company recently began making payments in January 2024 in a $500 million lawsuit regarding iPhone performance issues, and subsequently consented to pay $490 million in a UK class action brought forward by Norfolk County Council in March.

Adding to the company’s legal challenges, consumer advocacy organization Which? filed another class action lawsuit in November, claiming that Apple had misled consumers regarding its iCloud service.

Apple recently released a beta version of Apple Intelligence, featuring enhanced ChatGPT integration with Siri. 

The company has repeatedly emphasized privacy throughout the suite’s release cycle, stating the most queries would be handled on-device with any information transferred to Apple’s Private Cloud Compute servers remaining protected from storage or sharing.

In response to Apple’s $95 million settlement, South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission has launched an investigation into whether Siri’s voice gathering practices violated their consumer privacy regulations, initiating the probe five days after the U.S. settlement announcement. 

Meanwhile, in a parallel case, the same law firm is pursuing similar allegations against Google regarding users of Google products.

The case is currently underway in the same Northern California court.