Money may soon change hands after Google agreed to resolve a legal fight over how its voice-enabled products captured audio they were never meant to record.
A proposed class action settlement totaling $68 million was disclosed in court filings submitted last Friday.
The case traces back to situations where Google Assistant devices began recording without a proper “OK Google” command.
The controversy first surfaced publicly in 2019 through reporting by VRT NWS. That investigation described how audio clips generated by accidental activations, referred to internally as “False Accepts,” were routed to human reviewers.
Some of those workers later said the clips included private conversations and personal details, including moments involving children or other people who were not intended users of the device.
Plaintiffs argued that these recordings amounted to “unlawful and intentional recording of individuals’ confidential communications without their consent.”
The complaint also asserted that “information gleaned from these recordings was wrongly transmitted to third parties for targeted advertising and for other purposes.”
Google has rejected those claims and, as part of the settlement proposal, continues to deny any allegations of wrongdoing.
This case fits into a broader pattern that emerged the same year. In 2019, Google, Apple, and Amazon all faced scrutiny after it became public that voice assistant recordings were sometimes reviewed by human contractors following unintended activations.
Apple reached a similar agreement in 2025, paying $95 million while maintaining that Siri recordings were not used to build advertising profiles.
Since then, Apple has been preparing Siri for a generative AI refresh, Amazon has begun rolling out updates to Alexa, and Google has steadily sidelined Assistant as it promotes its newer Gemini system.
If approved by the court, the Google settlement would apply to users whose accounts were linked to at least one Assistant-enabled device going back to 2016.
Eligible hardware includes Pixel phones, Google Home products, smart speakers and displays, along with Nest Hub and Nest Hub Max devices. People who bought one of these products could receive between $18 and $56.
Others who used Google Assistant, or who lived in a home where an Assistant device captured their conversations without permission, may qualify for payments ranging from $2 to $10.
What the settlement does not change is the underlying design reality of voice assistants.
These systems depend on microphones that are always listening for a wake word, which means mistakes are part of their operation. When those mistakes result in recordings of private speech, the harm is not abstract.
The proposed payout offers compensation for past failures, but it also highlights how much trust users are expected to place in devices that are built to listen by default.
