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

Google agreed to pay $68 million to settle what its voice assistant deemed unfairly directed at users, among other things, to serve them ads, Reuters reports.

Google did not admit wrongdoing in the class action settlement, itself he sued the company about the “intentional illegal intrusion and recording of private communications of individuals without their consent and unlawful disclosure to third parties.” The lawsuit alleges that “information taken from the footage was improperly sent to third parties for marketing and other purposes.”

The case rested on “lies he admits,” in which Google Assistant is said to have opened and recorded the user’s messages despite not being prompted to do so with a wake-up call.

Americans have long suspected that their devices spy on them inappropriately. Those doubts have led, increasingly, to talk of legal malpractice. In 2021, Apple agreed to pay $95 million to address claims that the voice assistant, Siri, recorded their conversations without users’ consent.

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