Google Assistant privacy lawsuit settlement talks ended with a price tag: $68 million. Google has agreed to resolve a class action accusing its voice-activated assistant of improperly listening to smartphone users and violating their privacy, according to court filings made late Friday.
The proposed settlement was lodged in federal court in San Jose, California, and now awaits approval from U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman.
Claims of unwanted eavesdropping
The lawsuit alleged that Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., unlawfully recorded and shared private conversations after Google Assistant was activated without users’ intent. Plaintiffs said those recordings were then used to funnel targeted advertising to unsuspecting users.
“Hot words” and false alarms
Google Assistant is programmed to respond to trigger phrases such as “Hey Google” or “Okay Google,” a system similar to Apple’s Siri. But users claimed the technology frequently misfired, mistakenly interpreting background speech as activation commands — events referred to as “false accepts.”
Those false accepts, the lawsuit argued, resulted in ads appearing that reflected conversations users believed were private, making the assistant feel less like a helper and more like an uninvited guest at the table.
