Oura Ring Faces Class Action Over AI-Generated Sleep Tracking Accuracy Claims

Oura Faces Lawsuit Over Alleged Innacurate AI Sleep Tracking - CNET

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.

Proposed Oura Lawsuit Highlights Wearables' Health Limitations

Smart ring maker Oura is facing a proposed class action lawsuit that claims its smart rings aren't capable of identifying and measuring sleep cycles, TechCrunch reports. The lawsuit, filed in a district court in California, says that because Oura's products don't measure common physical signals of sleep, like eye movements and electrical brain activity, instead making less accurate calculations based on secondary markers. Oura has advertised multiple generations of Oura Ring on their ability to accurately track sleep, including claiming the most recent Oura Ring 5 offers "95% Sleep Staging Accuracy compared to [a] clinical sleep lab." The problem, the lawsuit claims, is that Oura rings aren't actually able to take the same measurements as the sensors used in formal polysomnography (a sleep study). "Instead, Oura's AI models are doing guesswork as to what may be happening, based on improper inputs," the lawsuit says, only admitting that its smart rings aren't the same as a sleep study in technical materials most customers won't read. Because the company has continued to advertise its smart rings, amplified through celebrity endorsements and influencer marketing, without acknowledging the limitations of their sleep tracking abilities, the lawsuit alleges Oura has misled customers. Besides seeking to establish a class for future claims, the lawsuit is also asking the court for an injunction to stop what it alleges is false advertising and for monetary compensation for customers who were misled. Gizmodo has reached out to Oura for comment on the lawsuit. We'll update this article if the company responds. On some level, it shouldn't be surprising that an Oura Ring might not be as accurate as the multitude of sensors used in a true sleep study. The newest Oura ring includes a photoplethysmogram (PPG) sensor that uses red and green LEDs to measure things like heart rate, blood oxygen levels, and breathing; sensors for tracking body temperature; and an accelerometer that tracks movement. Those notably don't track brain activity, eye movement, electrical activity in your heart, or muscle activity, the types of markers that are typically tracked to understand someone's sleep in a clinical setting. Oura instead relies on the data it does collect to make an informed guess at the quality of your sleep and the amount of time you spent in each sleep stage. Like plenty of other wearable makers, Oura exists in a wellness gray area, where the accuracy of its features can be backed up with studies, but they can't be considered truly capable of medical diagnosis by regulators. Oura's been able to exist comfortably in that gray area for a while, but the lawsuit could be one expression of the challenges it might face now that impressive sales and a future IPO are drawing further scrutiny.

Oura Ring Is Heading Toward an IPO. Now a Lawsuit Targets One of Its Biggest Selling Points

Oura Ring claims to do it all -- tracking your heart rate, exercise, and even sleep cycles -- via a futuristic, but unobtrusive, band. But some users are fed up with its purported sleep-tracking capabilities, so much so that they are taking legal action. A class action lawsuit, filed on Thursday in San Francisco, accuses the $11 billion wearable company of falsely advertising the device's sleep-tracking technology. "In reality, Oura rings cannot measure one's sleep or cycles. That's because sleep happens in the brain, not on one's finger," the lawsuit states. "Oura's AI models are doing guess work as to what may be happening, based on improper inputs, and thus taking advantage of desperate consumers who struggle with their sleep or are concerned for their health by selling faulty AI-based inference as reliable science." The lawsuit, filed in the name of Madison Surber by Clarkson Law Firm, does not challenge all of the purported abilities of the Oura Ring, such as temperature or heart beat measurements. It specifically takes issue with Finnish Oura Health's claims that the ring can determine the "exact stage of sleep the wearer is in," the suit states, noting that that type of calculation "requires electrodes in the scalp and sensors on the eyes, as only a hospital or other clinical setting can do." The lawsuit cites recent marketing language, taken from Oura's websites, retail partners, and social media in which the company claims its rings can achieve anywhere from 79 percent accuracy to "95% Sleep Staging Accuracy compared to clinical sleep lab." The lawsuit also references technical materials that reportedly differentiate Oura Rings from the types of overnight tests conducted during clinical sleep studies, due to Oura's lack of electric brain activity and eye-movement measurements in sleep tests. "Oura Ring claims to provide consumers with a holistic sleep health analysis, but the ring doesn't actually produce an accurate score of an individual's sleep quality. Yet people are making real health decisions based on that feedback," Shireen Clarkson, Clarkson Law Firm co-founder and partner, said in a statement. "The reality is, consumers are paying a premium price, up to hundreds of dollars a year, and handing over their most personal health data to a big tech company. But what they get in return is a mere guess dressed up as science." The lawsuit specifically names the Oura Ring 4, Oura Ring 4 Ceramic, and Oura Ring 5, and seeks monetary compensation for Surber and other class members, who it says "overpaid for Products that should have, but failed to comport with the advertised representations." The lawsuit also seeks to prevent Oura from continuing to make claims about the sleep-tracking capabilities of its rings.