Google Agrees to Settle Class Action Lawsuit Targeting Voice Assistant

Google has reportedly agreed to a preliminary settlement in a class action lawsuit that alleged that the firm’s Google Assistant spied on smartphone users.

The proposed $68 million settlement was filed Friday (Jan. 23) and requires approval by a judge, Reuters reported Monday (Jan. 26).

The lawsuit alleged that when Google Assistant was triggered by users’ words that it misperceived as the “hot words” that are meant to activate it, it illegally recorded and disseminated the users’ private conversations that followed in order to send them targeted advertising, according to the report.

The voice-activated assistant is designed to respond to hot words like “Hey Google” or “Okay Google,” the report said. When an assistant misperceives other words as hot words, the issue is known as “false accepts,” per the report.

Google denied wrongdoing but settled to avoid litigation, according to the report.

It was reported Jan. 2 that Apple agreed to pay $95 million to settle a privacy lawsuit that when its voice assistant, Siri, was activated unintentionally, it shared the private discussions it overhead with Apple, and Apple shared these communications with third parties without users’ consent.

The proposed settlement also requires Apple to address the alleged privacy violations outlined in the lawsuit by confirming it has permanently deleted Siri audio recordings obtained before October 2019 and by publishing an explanation to its users about how they can opt-in to a choice to improve Siri.

In the agreement, Apple denied wrongdoing.

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “GenAI and Voice Assistants: Adoption and Trust Across Generations” found that consumers’ trust in voice assistants has been declining, which has led to declining usage across age groups.

The report found that over the previous 15 months, the share of consumers who expressed confidence in voice assistants becoming as smart and reliable as humans dropped from 73% to 60%, while the percentage who were skeptical about the future capabilities of voice assistants increased from 27% to 40%.

The drop in trust is attributed to a lack of progress and the failure of voice assistants to meet users’ high expectations for performance and reliability, according to the report.