Someone would have noticed if all the phones on their network started streaming audio whenever a conversation happened.
It would be really expensive to send, transcribe and then analyze every single human on earth. Even if you were able to do it for insanely cheap ($0.02/hr) every device is gonna be sending hours of talking per day. Then you have to somehow identify "who" is talking because TV and strangers and everything else is getting sent, so you would need specific transcribers trained for each human that can identify not just that the word "coca-cola" was said, but that it was said by a specific person.
So yeah if you managed to train specific transcribers that can identify their unique users output and then you were willing to spend the ~0.10 per person to transcribe all the audio they produce for the day you could potentially listen to and then run some kind of processing over what they say. I suppose it is possible but I don't think it would be worth it.
> Google agreed to pay $68m to settle a lawsuit claiming that its voice-activated assistant spied inappropriately on smartphone users, violating their privacy.
Apple as well https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/03/apple-sir...
I keep seeing folks float this as some admission of wrongdoing but it is not.
While not an "admission of wrongdoing," it points to some non-zero merit in the plaintiff's case.
It absolutely is.
If they knew without a doubt their equipment (that they produce) doesn't eavesdrop, then why would they be concerned about "risk [...] and uncertainty of litigation"?
Also people already believe google (and every other company) eavesdrops on them, going to trail and winning the case people would not change that.
Again: If their products did not eavesdrop, precisely what risks and uncertainty are they afraid of?
(1) Alphabet admits wrongdoing, but gets an innocent verdict
(2) Alphabet receives a verdict of wrongdoing, but denies it
and the parent using either to claim lack of
> some admission of wrongdoing
The court's designed to settle disputes more than render verdicts.
It's a private, civil case that settled. To not deny wrongdoing (even if guilty) would be insanely rare.
Only if you use a very narrow criteria that a verdict was reached. However, that's impractical as 95% of civil cases resolve without a trial verdict.
Compare this to someone who got the case dismissed 6 years ago and didn't pay out tens of millions of real dollars to settle. It's not a verdict, but it's dishonest to say the plaintiff's case had zero merit of wrongdoing based on the settlement and survival of the plaintiff's case.
You don't have to stream the audio. You can transcribe it locally. And it doesn't have to be 100% accurate. As for user identify, people have mentioned it on their phones which almost always have a one-to-one relationship between user and phone, and their smart devices, which are designed to do this sort of distinguishing.
If this really is something that is happening, I am just very surprised that there is no hard evidence of it.
With their assumptions, you can log the entire globe for $1.6 billion/day (= $0.02/hr * 16 awake hours * 5 billion unique smartphone users). This is the upper end.
At one point I had the misfortune to be the target audience for a particular stomach churning ear wax removal add.
I felt that suffering shared is suffering halved, so decided to test this in a park with 2 friends. They pulled out their phones (an Android and a IPhone) and I proceeded to talk about ear wax removal loudly over them.
Sure enough, a day later one of them calls me up, aghast, annoyed and repelled by the add which came up.
This was years ago, and in the UK, so the add may no longer play.
However, more recently I saw an ad for a reusable ear cleaner. (I have no idea why I am plagued by these ads. My ears are fortunately fine. That said, if life gives you lemons)
So isn’t it possible that your friend had the same misfortune? I assume you were similar ages, same gender, same rough geolocation, likely similar interests. It wouldn’t be surprising that you’d both see the same targeted ad campaign.