PNN – Google has agreed to pay $68 million in compensation to settle claims related to the spying activities of one of its mobile phone applications.
Following the publication and substantiation of allegations that Google’s voice assistant spied on smartphone users, the company has agreed to pay compensation.
The plaintiffs claimed that Google’s voice assistant began listening to their conversations after mistakenly detecting speech that resembled its wake words. The lawsuit argued that private information the Google Assistant was not supposed to hear was used to deliver targeted advertising to those users.
Google initially denied any wrongdoing in response to the lawsuit, but according to court documents, the company agreed to the settlement to avoid escalating risks to its reputation and to free itself from the burden of substantial litigation costs. This preliminary class-action settlement was filed on Friday and is now awaiting approval by US District Judge Beth Labson Freeman.
Over the past year, Google has been phasing out its traditional Google Assistant and replacing it with its Gemini artificial intelligence. However, AI chatbots have also been cited as tools capable of violating privacy and should not be fully trusted either.