A lawsuit has been filed against the well-known smart ring brand Oura, alleging the company used false advertising by deceiving users about the accuracy of its AI-generated sleep tracking. The suit, filed Thursday by Clarkson Law Firm in San Francisco, seeks class action status and a jury trial.
“Oura built an $11 billion company on that trust,” the lawsuit alleges. “To capitalize on consumers’ desire for a tracker that could actually track sleep and monitor their sleep cycles. Oura sold expensive tracking rings, priced at $300 and up, advertising exactly that: that Oura rings are capable of seeing what only a hospital sleep lab can see.”
Representatives from Oura didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The lawsuit alleges that Oura Ring‘s algorithms and sensors can’t detect the physiological signals required to accurately measure the details of the different stages of sleep. Instead, the suit alleges that Oura’s devices rely on “AI-generated guesses” that are no better than “a coin flip.” Since Oura says otherwise in its marketing and product details, the suit alleges the company is deceiving customers who have bought an Oura Ring.
Head over to Oura’s website, and you’ll see the company says its wearables track seven sleep elements, including REM and deep sleep, to provide a sleep score. The suit points out that Oura’s marketing includes statements such as “95% Sleep Staging Accuracy compared to clinical sleep lab,” but alleges that sleep labs require complex methods, including multiple electrodes to measure brain activity, which Oura’s products lack.
“When people rely on a device to guide decisions about their health, misinformation cannot be tolerated,” Ryan Clarkson, co-founder and managing partner at Clarkson Law Firm, said in a press release. “Oura users trust that the numbers on their screen reflect reality. People structure their days, interpret the way they feel and design their lives around inaccurate figures.”
What does this mean for Oura?
It’s too early to say whether Oura Ring buyers could join the suit, or what specific compensation they could get should the trial go ahead or a settlement be reached.
For more insight, I asked one of CNET’s experts on Oura products, Senior Editor Anna Gragert, what she thinks of the company.
“While health trackers like the Oura Ring can flag potential symptoms that may prompt a helpful conversation with your doctor, they can’t diagnose,” Gragert said. “They’re also not the same as the medical equipment you’d find at your doctor’s office. For sleep scores and stages in particular, these are just estimates … don’t overemphasize a single data point or ‘score.’”
Gragert also mentioned that more research is needed on devices like those Oura sells.
“It’s also important to consider that wearable health trackers have been launched at a pace that’s made it difficult for scientific research to keep up, so more studies investigating the potential downsides of these devices are needed,” she said.
This isn’t the first lawsuit Oura has faced: There is an ongoing class action alleging that Oura collected sensitive personal information without customer consent for two years.
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