No Siri data has ever been used for marketing purposes or sold to a third-party company for any reason, Apple said today in response to accusations that conversations Siri has captured were used for advertising.
A lawsuit that Apple has agreed to settle alleged that Apple provided information obtained from accidental Siri recordings to third-party companies for the purpose of marketing products. Plaintiffs in the lawsuit claimed that they were shown ads for Air Jordan shoes and Olive Garden after Siri recorded them speaking privately about those companies.
Apple said that did not happen because that's not the way that Siri works. Siri data that Apple uses is anonymized and not linked to a specific user, plus Siri data is not sold. Apple does use Siri information to improve the personal assistant, but the use of audio recordings is now opt-in and turned off by default. Apple's full statement:
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.
The lawsuit was initially filed in 2019 after contractors working for Apple said that they overheard private conversations from accidental Siri activations. At the time, Apple's privacy terms did not explicitly state that it was using human oversight for Siri, and the contractors were concerned customers were unaware that accidental recordings were being listed to.
The customers who filed the lawsuit claimed that they were "regularly recorded without consent" and that they would not have purchased their iPhones had they known about this Siri feature. A judge initially threw out the lawsuit because the plaintiffs did not provide evidence of Apple recording their conversations, so it was refiled with the accusation that Siri data collected had been used for targeted advertising.
Apple says that it settled the lawsuit for $95 million to avoid additional costly litigation. As part of the settlement, Apple said that it "continues to deny any and all alleged wrongdoing and liability, specifically denies each of the Plaintiffs' contentions and claims, and continues to deny that the Plaintiffs' claims and allegations would be suitable for class action status."
The settlement already received preliminary approval from the court. All current or former owners or purchasers of a Siri device in the United States whose confidential or private communications were obtained by Apple between September 17, 2014 and December 31, 2024 are considered class members and could be eligible for a payment of up to $20.
Lawyers will set up a settlement website and eligible class members will be contacted.
