SGT represents a putative class of individuals that allege Apple’s Siri voice assistant creates, collects, stores, and uses the voiceprints of Apple device users without consent in violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, 740 ILCS 14/, et seq. The Amended Class Action Complaint filed by SGT on December 23, 2019 alleges that Apple developed a speaker recognition feature for its Siri voice assistant Siri which enabled Siri to respond only to the voice of the device owner, or “speaker recognition.” In doing so, the complaint further alleges, Apple started creating, capturing, or otherwise collecting users’ voiceprints through a process Apple refers to as “user enrollment” without obtaining informed consent from Siri users and using those voiceprints to process Siri requests and improve the Siri product. On December 9, 2020, the Court sustained Plaintiffs’ claims and denied Apple’s motion to dismiss.
The case is Zaluda v. Apple Inc., No. 2019-CH-11771, and is pending before Hon. Michael T. Mullen of the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, Chancery Division.
