A new lawsuit has been filed against Google, alleging that the tech giant has been secretly stealing personal and creative data from hundreds of millions of Americans without their knowledge or consent. The proposed class-action lawsuit, filed by Clarkson Law Firm in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, accuses Google, its AI sister company DeepMind, and parent company Alphabet of using people’s data to train their generative AI products.
The lawsuit claims that Google has taken personal and professional information, creative works, photographs, and even emails from individuals to build its AI products. It asserts that Google has been harvesting this data without notice or consent for years. The complaint also cites an update to Google’s privacy policy from July 1, which states that the company may collect publicly available online information to train its AI models and develop products like Google Translate, Bard, and Cloud AI capabilities.
According to the lawsuit, the data allegedly taken by Google includes information from subscription-based websites as well as websites known for pirated collections of books and creative works. The complaint argues that Google must understand it doesn’t own the internet or the creative works of individuals, simply because they are shared online. The lawsuit claims that the use of publicly available information does not equate to free use for any purpose.
Google has yet to respond to the lawsuit, but in a statement to Reuters, the company called the claims baseless. Google’s general counsel, Halimah DeLaine Prado, stated that the company has been transparent about using data from public sources to train its AI models. She added that American law supports using public information to create new beneficial uses and expressed Google’s intention to refute the allegations.
Notably, this lawsuit comes shortly after Clarkson Law Firm filed a similar complaint against OpenAI, accusing the company of stealing significant amounts of personal data to train its ChatGPT model, including medical and child-related information.
The plaintiffs in both lawsuits have chosen to remain anonymous, identified only by their initials, occupations, state, and internet usage. This decision was made to avoid intrusive scrutiny and potential backlash. One of the plaintiffs in the Google lawsuit, referred to as J.L., described as a New York Times best-selling author and investigative journalist residing in Texas, claimed that Google used a stolen PDF of her book to train Bard. The lawsuit alleges that her work is now freely available on Bard, with the AI chatbot providing chapter summaries and sharing verbatim excerpts from the book.
As the legal battle unfolds, Google faces allegations of unauthorized data collection and usage for training its AI products. The outcome of this lawsuit could have significant implications for the company and its approach to privacy.
