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Apple could owe you part of a class action lawsuit settlement centered around the companys voice assistant, Siri. The settlement was reached in January, and Apple agreed to set aside $95 million to pay people who allegedly had their conversations or queries recorded after unintentionally activating Siri. Heres what you need to know about the settlement, key dates, and how to determine whether you can participate in the $95 million payout. What is the settlement about? Back in 2014, Apple added a Hey, Siri hotword command that, when spoken, automatically triggers Siri on a compatible Apple device to listen to what is being said. The feature was meant to be useful to users by allowing them to trigger the voice assistant without having to physically press or tap a button. But sometimes people could trigger Siri using the Hey, Siri voice command unintentionally or accidentally. The lawsuit alleged that the resulting words or conversations Siri picked up after these unintended activations were then shared with third parties or advertisersand thus had their privacy violated. As with nearly every class action lawsuit that it settled, Apple denied any wrongdoing. As the iPhone maker told Fast Company in January, “Apple settled this case to avoid additional litigation so we can move forward from concerns about third-party grading that we already addressed in 2019. We use Siri data to improve Siri, and we are constantly developing technologies to make Siri even more private. Now, users who are included in the settlement can begin filing claims for their share of the $95 million. Who is included in the Siri settlement? Not everyone who owns an Apple device is included in the settlement. In order to be part of the settlement class, you must meet several requirements, according to the official settlement website. Those include: You must have owned or purchased a Siri-enabled iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, MacBook, iMac, HomePod, iPod touch, or Apple TV. Those devices must have been owned or purchased between September 17, 2014 and December 31, 2024. You must reside in the United States and/or its territories. Your confidential or private communications must have been obtained by Apple and/or were shared with third parties as a result of an unintended Siri activation. How do I know if I am included in the settlement? People who are known to be included in the settlement will have received an email or postal communication saying they have been identified as a settlement member. However, if you have not received such communication but still believe that you may be a settlement member, you can contact the settlement administrator. How much can I get from the settlement? The amount you received from the $95 million settlement depends on various factors. Apple agreed to pay out $95 million to settle the class action suit, but some of that $95 million will go to pay for things like attorneys fees and other costs. Whatever is left over will be distributed to the settlement members on a pro rata basis. Claimants are allowed to submit claims for up to five devices. Payments per device will be capped at $20 each. That means that a claimant is most likely to receive no more than $100. However, note that the settlement website says that payment amounts could increase or decrease depending on the number of claims filed. The final payment amount per device will not be known until all claims are submitted. What should I do if I am part of the settlement? If you are part of the settlement, you should file a claim using the claim form on the settlement website. Keep in mind that you only have until July 2, 2025, to file a claim. Any claims are expected to be paid after the final court hearing in August 2025. Full details of the class action settlement can be found on the settlement website here.
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From his first moments on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Leo XIV gave three important clues about what kind of leader of the 1.4-billion-member Catholic Church he will be. Leo, formerly U.S. Cardinal Robert Prevost, was elected by the world’s cardinals on Thursday as the new pope on the second day of the conclave to choose a successor to Pope Francis, who died last month. He is the first pope from the United States, but holds dual citizenship in Peru, where he was a missionary for decades before becoming a cardinal. Leo’s first clue was his choice of name. Popes often use this choice to send their first major signal about the priorities of their new papacy. Francis took his name from the 13th century St. Francis of Assisi, who rejected wealth and wanted to care for the poor. The last pope to take the name Leo, Leo XIII, focused much of his 1878-1903 papacy on advocating for the rights of workers, calling for fair pay, fair working conditions, and the right to join unions. “By picking the name Leo XIV, he shows he is committed to the social teaching of the church,” said Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit commentator who follows the papacy closely. Leo’s second clue was his choice of language and the words he spoke, which put a clear emphasis on the need for peace, something Francis also often focused on. None of his speech to the crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square was in English, but rather Italian, the language of the papacy, and a brief foray into Spanish to greet his former community in Peru. He did not mention the U.S. “La pace sia con tutti voi!” (Peace be with you!), Leo’s first words in public, echoed the ones Catholics use in their celebrations but also offered an immediate message of peace in a world riven with conflict. Before heading into the secret conclave on May 7, the world’s cardinals issued a statement lamenting the conflicts “in Ukraine, the Middle East, and many other parts of the world” and making a “heartfelt appeal” for peace. The new pope said he wanted to share God’s peace, calling it “a disarmed peace and a disarming peace” that is “humble and persevering.” Leo also mentioned Francis, who offered his last blessing to crowds in Rome on Easter Sunday, the day before he died of a stroke after battling double pneumonia for weeks. “We still have in our ears that weak, but always courageous voice of Pope Francis,” he said. Leo asked permission to offer the same blessing Francis used just a few weeks ago, saying: “God loves us, God loves everyone, and evil will not prevail. We are in the hands of God.” Leo’s third clue was in his choice of attire. Unlike Francis, who spurned all the trappings of the papacy including on the first day he was elected in 2013, Leo wore a traditional red papal garment over his white cassock. Although Leo follows in the tradition of Francis, he signalled he is a new, and different, pope. Joshua McElwee, Reuters
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As recently as 2021, Figma was a one-product company. That product was Figma Design, the dominant tool for creating app and web interfaces. The companys subsequent addition of offerings such as FigJam (whiteboarding) and Figma Slides (presentations) was hardly a frenzied land grab. But the announcements Figma made this week at its Config conference in San Francisco cover so much ground that my impulse was to interpret them as a massive, sprawling new attempt to take on . . . well, almost everybody. Figma Make turns prompts into AI-generated code? Shades of GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and numerous other AI programming tools. Figma Sites provides features for constructing, hosting, and updating websites? Well, thats a content management system, like WordPress, Squarespace, and Wix. Figma Buzz helps companies create marketing assets that retain a degree of consistency, with AI help if desired? Sounds akin to Canva and Adobes Canva rival, Express. Figma Draw lets people create free-form vector illustrations? So does Adobes 38-year-old Illustrator. Figmas Config conference at San Franciscos Moscone Center [Photo: Courtesy of Figma] When I asked Figma cofounder and CEO Dylan Field whether the company was indeed trying to compete directly with so many well-established players in multiple categories, he discounted the notion. Instead, he told me, the new products all support its original focus on turning raw concepts into shippable software. The Figma journey that we’re trying to support users on is going from idea to product, he told me. Everything’s truly through that lens. Still, it would be a mistake to regard Figmas news as NBD. Even if its original product was a design tool, two-thirds of its users arent designers. Theyre all the other people inside companies who play roles in product creation, and even if all the company does is address their needs, it will brush up against new rivals. As Field likes to declare, Creativity is the new productivity. Figma might be in as good a position as anyone to spread that vision to additional classes of software. As a business, Figma also has every incentive to think big. Its been almost a year and half since its $20 billion deal to be acquired by Adobe fell apart over antitrust concerns, leaving it as an independent entity pursuing a self-contained vision. Last month, it confidentially filed a draft S-1 form with the Securities and Exchange Commission, beginning the process that will eventually lead to it going public. The more optimistic investors are about the companys ability to keep growing, the better its IPO will fare. Figma Buzz [Image: Figma] (Figma Designs ubiquity as a UX design tool is manifestly obvious90% of designers who responded to a 2023 survey said they used itbut as a private company, Figma is secretive about hard numbers relating to its business. It does say that 85% of users are outside the U.S., proving that its a global phenomenon. But the last time it talked about financial return was in September 2022, as part of the Adobe deal announcement. Back then, it said that it expected to do $400 million in revenue that year, with a gross profit of 90%. More current information will come out as part of the IPO process.) As Figma has decided which new products it might build, it hasnt had to look far. Like Excel and Photoshop, Figma Design is the kind of tool that people grow comfortable with and call into service for jobs well beyond its theoretical mandate. Rather than turn it into too much of a kitchen sink, the company has tended to spin out tasks into new purpose-built apps. All of them have a familial resemblance and work together as a suite. The centrality of Figma Design does serve to set the companys latest products apart from others in the same general zip code. Maybe Figma Buzz will win some hearts based purely on its quality. But it seems even more likely that people will pick it over Canva or Adobe Express because its optimized to serve workflows that are already Figma-centric. It’s very easy to be able to push a template from Figma Design to the Buzz surface, Field says. And then people know exactly what they can edit. They can go edit it, insert images, or go find a different template if they so choose, and know that they’re on brand. Or they can go off the rails if they want to. Then theres AI, which was already in the air at Config 2023. At last years conference, the company announced a design-generating feature called Make Designs, whichlike AI rollouts all over the tech industrygot off to a bumpy start. After controversy ignited on Twitter over the eeri similarities between a weather app it designed and the one Apple ships on the iPhone, Figma pulled back the feature and reworked it. Even now, designers are still puzzling out how they feel about AI. In a new study commissioned by Figma, only 31% said they currently use the technology for their core work, 69% were satisfied with it, and 54% thought it improved quality. All those figures were notably lower than ones reported in the same study by developers. Uncertainty over AI might be a sign the killer apps havent arrived. People value efficiency, Field says. And so where we can help there, that’s really important. But also, they really value raising the ceiling and making it so they’re able to do better work. And I think that’s where AI has not yet had the impact it should. Customer feedback might help explain Figmas careful positioning of its new AI features. The company says some organizations may ship products created by Make, which lets users start with something theyve roughed out in Figma Design and then use prompts to generate code. Mostly, though, its emphasizing the potential to quickly turn flat designs into rich prototypes that help push progress along. Another application: adding a dash of custom interactivity to websites powered by Figma Sites. Figma Make [Image: Figma] AI is also present in both Figma Design and Figma Buzz in the form of image generation features based on OpenAIs latest GPT-Image-1 model. But when I spoke with Field, he seemed less excited by the prospect of turning over image creation to a machine than by Figma Draw, a classical sort of illustration tool for people who want to hand-create imagery thats precise, reflects a distinctive style, and may even mimic work done with old-school art implements such as a paintbrush. If Draw has any AI at all, it didnt matter enough to merit a mention in the blog post introducing the product. We have a lot of opportunity to build tools for folks [to] be more divergent and have more craft and stand out, Field told me. And we think that’s the differentiator that’ll make people win over time. As some organizations lean too heavily on AI, were going to see more and more bland, look-alike products. Its nice to think that doubling down on unmistakably human creativity could be a competitive advantage. And that Figma wont stray too far from its traditional emphasis on helping create such work, even as it figures out how to make AI make sense. Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if you’re reading it on FastCompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard. 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