Google Faces Class-Action Lawsuit Over Misuse of Personal Data to Train AI

A lawsuit has been filed in California alleging that Google has stolen and misused the personal data of users to train and improves its AI products.

According to court filings, Google has been served a class-action lawsuit over its AI efforts. The lawsuit is yet another one that has been filed for tech giants for similar reasons.

Google AI Lawsuit Has 10 Complaints

Clarkson Law Firm filed the lawsuit in a district court in the Northern District of California. The complaint refers to a violation of unfair competition laws and the business and professions code.

Additionally, it claims negligence, the invasion of privacy, larceny, conversion, unjust enrichment, and copyright infringement. There are ten complaints in total.

The lawsuit states that Google’s AI product depends on stolen web-scraped data and “vast troves” of private user data. It also refers to the company’s “revised policy” that gives it permission to take anything shared online to train and improve its AI products.

The lawsuit reads,

“… Google has been secretly stealing everything ever created and shared on the internet by hundreds of millions of Americans. Google has taken all our personal and professional information, our creative and copywritten works, our photographs, and even our emails—virtually the entirety of our digital footprint—and is using it to build commercial Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) Products like “Bard”…”

OpenAI Dealing With Similar Lawsuits

Google isn’t the only company that is experiencing legal trouble at the moment. Microsoft-backed OpenAI created the AI hit sensation that is ChatGPT. However, it has also been besieged by concerns from the community, including a lawsuit.

Specifically, the lawsuit against OpenAI alleges that the company has infringed copyright laws in its effort to train its AI model.

Another concern is that the platform inappropriately collected and used data from users.

Comedian Sarah Silverman has also filed class-action lawsuits against both OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement. The lawsuit alleged that the companies obtained copies of the authors’ works from illegal online “shadow libraries.”

AI Regulation, a High Priority for Governments

These lawsuits have been piling up. Governments worldwide have been wrangling with how to regulate the rapidly growing technology that is AI.

There has been some progress in this regard, with the European Union’s AI Act being the most significant development. The latter is the first major set of AI industry regulations, requiring platforms like ChatGPT to be reviewed before commercial release.

Both China and the United States are also working on comprehensive regulation, with China currently working on extensive regulation.

Elon Musk has also been speaking to lawmakers on both sides of the US political spectrum on the subject of AI regulation.