Overheard unintentionally: Google pays 68 million US dollars for Assistant
Class-action plaintiffs in the USA receive 68 million US dollars from Google. They accuse the company of privacy violations with the Google Assistant.
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Google will pay a total of 68 million US dollars to class-action plaintiffs in the USA due to unintentional activations of the Google Assistant. A corresponding out-of-court settlement between Google and the plaintiffs' representatives was filed on January 23rd with the competent court in San José, California.
The plaintiffs accuse Google of violating their privacy with the Google Assistant. This concerns so-called "false accepts", i.e., unintentional activation of the microphones in Assistant devices such as mobile phones or Google Home speakers. Normally, the Assistant is only supposed to listen when addressed with "Hey Google" or "Okay Google". However, that voice assistants also activate with similarly sounding phrases is a problem known since their market launch.
Google denies allegations
The result is that the Google Assistant also overhears private conversations that were not intended for the Assistant. The plaintiffs even accuse Google of having used these conversations to personalize advertising. Google denies this. The company also emphasizes that it never guaranteed 100% reliability of the wake-up phrases. Google only agreed to the out-of-court settlement to minimize further litigation risks.
In fact, Google openly admits on a privacy information page that the Assistant can also be activated unintentionally: "Sometimes Google Assistant is accidentally activated when it's mistakenly detected that you need help – for example, by a sound that sounds similar to 'Hey Google,' or by an accidental manual activation," it says there. In this case, you should say "Hey Google, you weren't meant to be on" to delete the unwanted recording.
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Apple also paid
The out-of-court settlement between Google and the class-action plaintiffs still needs to be approved by the competent court in San José. The complete court document has been uploaded by The Verge. The lawsuit was filed in 2019.
Unintentional activations are also a problem with other voice assistants: Just a year ago, Apple also settled out of court with US class-action plaintiffs in a comparable case regarding Siri activations. Apple paid the plaintiffs a total of 95 million US dollars.
(dahe)
