Apple Settles Siri Privacy Lawsuit for $95 Million

It’s as if Siri is cupping its ears and telling us: I can’t hear you. 

Apple — admitting no wrongdoing — has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit that alleged its digital assistant recorded users’ private conversations, which plaintiffs claimed were then shared with advertisers and other third parties. The price tag: $95 million.

Legal Payday

According to the suit, filed in 2019, plaintiffs claimed they were served with advertisements for Nike Air Jordan sneakers, Pit Viper sunglasses, and the Olive Garden restaurant after discussing them within earshot of their Apple device. Another claimed the mention of a “brand name surgical treatment” at a private doctor’s appointment led to receiving targeted ads for the treatment.

The suspected cause was Siri being erroneously activated by sounds or speaking, the lawsuit claimed. From 2014, the voice assistant was supposed to be awoken by the trigger phrase “Hey Siri” or simply “Siri” (last year, Apple added the option of creating custom trigger phrases and words) — and the class period runs from September 2014 to December 31, 2024. But, as with any class action, the winners of the settlement may not exactly be the winners:

• Plaintiffs, who could number in the millions given there are an estimated 84 million Siri users in the US, according to market research firm Emarketer, could be entitled to up to a mere $20 per Apple device. But their lawyers may seek $28.5 million in fees and $1.1 million for expenses from the settlement fund (two of the three firms involved also happen to be representing users in a similar class action against Google over its voice assistant).
• Apple, meanwhile, gets to brush off a pesky nuisance that amounts to a rounding error on its financial reports while admitting no wrongdoing. The $95 million settlement is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of Apple’s $93.7 billion in net income in its latest fiscal year — or, in other words, it makes that much in profit every nine hours or so.

The settlement was filed in a Bay Area federal court on Tuesday and still requires a formal approval from a district judge.

Hear No Apple, See No Apple: The Siri suit is poised to go silent at the same time that Apple may be halting production of its Vision Pro headset, which it previously scaled back due to demand, according to the ever-reliable Apple-focused website MacRumors. Call us crazy, but the hefty $3,499 price tag might have something to do with consumers looking the other way.