Google paid $68 million to settle claims that its voice assistant spied on users.

Google has agreed to pay $68 million to settle claims that its voice assistant illegally monitored users to serve them ads, among other things, Reuters reported.

Google did not admit to any wrongdoing during the class action settlement process, accusing the company of “illegally and intentionally intercepting and recording individuals’ confidential communications without their consent and then unauthorizedly disclosing those communications to third parties.” The suit also alleged that “information collected from these recordings was incorrectly transferred to third parties for targeted advertising and other purposes.”

The incident centers around ‘false acceptance’, where Google Assistant is alleged to have activated and recorded the user’s communications despite not being intentionally prompted to wake it. TechCrunch has reached out to Google for comment.

Americans have long suspected that their devices are spying on them inappropriately. These suspicions have increasingly led to claims of legal misconduct. In 2021, Apple agreed to pay $95 million to settle claims that its voice assistant Siri recorded conversations without users’ request.

Google, like other tech giants, has faced other privacy-related lawsuits in recent years. Last year, the company agreed to pay $1.4 billion to the state of Texas to settle two lawsuits alleging it violated state data privacy laws.