Lawsuit Alleges Google's Data Collection Practices for AI Training
– Google, along with its parent company Alphabet and AI subsidiary DeepMind, is facing a class action lawsuit alleging that it scraped data from millions of users without their consent to train its AI products.
– The lawsuit, filed by Clarkson Law Firm in a federal court in California, accuses Google of violating copyright laws and misappropriating personal and copyrighted works from users.
– The complaint claims that Google has been using the data it collected from the internet to train AI products like its chatbot Bard, stating that the company has taken "virtually the entirety of our digital footprint."
– The lawsuit highlights a recent update to Google's privacy policy that explicitly mentions the use of publicly accessible information for training AI models and tools, including Bard.
– The complaint raises concerns about the legal scrutiny over copyright issues and the use of personal and sensitive data, including data from children, by companies training AI models on vast amounts of online data.
– The lawsuit seeks injunctive relief to temporarily freeze commercial access to Google's generative AI tools like Bard and requests unspecified damages for individuals whose data was allegedly misappropriated.
– The attorneys representing the plaintiffs argue that personal information and data are valuable property and should not be used without consent.
– The lawsuit emphasizes the difference between Google's indexing of online data for search results and scraping data to train AI tools, suggesting that the latter alters incentives for purchasing creative works.
– The attorneys call for Google to provide an opt-out option for users to prevent their data from being used for AI training while still maintaining their internet usage.
– The lawsuit involves eight plaintiffs, including a minor.