What was the Google Assistant recording lawsuit about?

The lawsuit was about accidental recordings. It claimed that Google Assistant woke when people had not said its wake phrase, recorded what was said next, and used those recordings to target ads ¹. Google denied wrongdoing. It agreed in January 2026 to pay $68 million to settle the case, without a court ruling on whether the claims were true.

The claim was about "false accepts"

A false accept is when a voice assistant wakes on a sound that is not its hot word, such as "Hey Google" or "OK Google." The plaintiffs said Google had no right to use their conversations for targeted advertising when Google Assistant misperceived what they said as a hot word ¹. So the core of the claim was not that Assistant listened all the time. It was that it recorded after a mistake.

A federal judge found in 2021 that the privacy notice fell short

In a 2021 decision, a federal judge found that Google's privacy policy did not sufficiently tell Assistant users that it would use recordings made without a manual activation or a hot word ². That ruling was a decision on whether the case could continue, not a finding that Google broke the law. We checked these details against news coverage of the decision, not the court filing itself.

Google agreed to pay $68 million in 2026

In January 2026, Google agreed to pay $68 million to settle the class action, which accused it of illegally recording private conversations through Google Assistant. Google denied wrongdoing ³. We have not confirmed whether a judge has given final approval to the settlement. Check the court docket before you rely on that status.

The amount is smaller than Apple's $95 million settlement over Siri, by $27 million ⁴. Both cases were about voice assistant recordings, and neither company admitted wrongdoing. A settlement amount is not a measure of how much anyone's recording was used.

It depends on which device you used and when

The case concerned Google Assistant. In its blog post, Google said it was upgrading more mobile users from Google Assistant to Gemini over the coming months ⁵. Check the activity settings on the phone you actually use.

We could not verify who is eligible to claim a share of the Google settlement, or what the payment would be. The sources we found describe the settlement but not the claims process, so do not assume you are in the class without checking the notice.

What to do

1. Open the Google account settings for your voice and activity controls, and check whether recording is turned on for the device you use.
2. For Gemini activity, Google says the default auto-delete period is 18 months, and you can change it to 3 or 36 months or turn auto-delete off ⁶.
3. If you are concerned about accidental activations, see our answer on how often voice assistants activate by accident, which covers the lab numbers and the steps you can take.
4. If you want speech kept off a server altogether, use a dictation tool that processes it on your computer. Yap, which we make, is an on-device dictation app for Mac and Windows. For the term, see online speech recognition.

For the wider picture, read our guide to human review of voice recordings. For the other companies, see did Apple contractors listen to Siri recordings and whether your phone is listening to you for ads.

For the full subject, see our overview of voice privacy.