Telecommunications Apple wants to resolve data protection dispute with multi-million settlement
The US technology company Apple has agreed to pay 95 million dollars in the legal dispute over the alleged recording of its users' private conversations by its voice assistant Siri. The company denied any wrongdoing.
03.01.2025, 06:00
SDA
"Apple has at all times denied and continues to deny any alleged wrongdoing or liability," according to court documents seen by the AFP news agency on Thursday. The agreement still has to be approved by a court. In the balance sheet of the extremely financially strong US company, the 95 million dollars would hardly make a difference.
Apple customers filed a class action lawsuit against the Californian company five years ago. They accused the company of using Siri to listen in on the private conversations of users of iPhones, iPads and other Apple devices without their knowledge. Following the unintentional activation of Siri, conversations were recorded by Apple and possibly even shared with third parties, according to the statement of claim.
Recordings are said to have been deleted
In addition to compensating the affected customers, the out-of-court settlement that has now been reached also provides for Apple to ensure that it has deleted unlawfully recorded statements and to make the options available to users regarding the recording of their voices by Siri more transparent.
Apple did not initially comment on the agreement when asked. According to the company, it attaches great importance to the protection of user data and uses this as a selling point to exclusively use its devices and programs.
In 2023, the US company Amazon agreed to pay more than 30 million dollars to the US Federal Trade Commission to settle a legal dispute over data protection violations with its door cameras and its digital assistant Alexa. Given the huge advances in artificial intelligence (AI), voice assistants such as Alexa and Siri are likely to become much more important in the near future.
