Apple Agrees to Pay $95 Million Settlement Over Siri Lawsuit [Update]

Apple is paying $95 million USD (about $137 million CAD) to settle claims that Siri recorded private conversations without permission. This settlement still needs approval from a judge in California, reports Reuters.

The lawsuit says Siri would sometimes accidentally hear words that trigger it, leading to accidental recordings. People claimed that after talking about things like Air Jordans, Olive Garden, or medical treatments, they started seeing ads for those topics. Those in the class action lawsuit claimed their private conversations were being shared with advertisers without their permission.

For those part of the lawsuit and owned a Siri-enabled device, like an iPhone or Apple Watch, from 2014 to 2024, they could be eligible for up to $20 USD per device.

While Apple didn’t admit to doing anything wrong, they agreed to settle to avoid dragging the case out in court (and possibly pay even more).

Given Apple’s decision to settle, we could possibly see a similar class action launched in Canada, as that seems to be the norm, copying lawsuits in the USA.

When it comes to class action lawsuits, the lawyers seem to always win. They are asking up to $28.5 million in fees and $1.1 million for expenses from the Apple payout. The same law firm is also handling a similar class action lawsuit in California, but involving Google’s voice assistant.

Update January 7, 2025: In a statement to iPhone in Canada, an Apple spokesperson said, “Siri has been engineered to protect user privacy from the beginning. Siri data has never been used to build marketing profiles and it has never been sold to anyone for any purpose. Apple settled this case to avoid additional litigation so we can move forward from concerns about third-party grading that we already addressed in 2019. We use Siri data to improve Siri, and we are constantly developing technologies to make Siri even more private.”