(qlmbusinessnews.com Fri, 8th Sept, 2023) London, UK —
OpenAI and Microsoft are the subjects of yet another class-action lawsuit, which alleges their use of web scraping techniques to access supposedly private data for training artificial intelligence AI models, including ChatGPT.
This lawsuit was filed on September 5th in San Francisco by a law firm representing two unnamed engineers. According to the filing with the United States District Court for the Northern District of California:
“This class action lawsuit arises from Defendants' unlawful and harmful conduct in developing, mArketing, and operating their AI products, including ChatGPT-3.5, ChatGPT-4.0, Dall-E, and Vall-E (the ‘Products'), which use stolen private information, including personally identifiable information, from hundreds of millions of internet users, including children of all ages, without their informed consent or knowledge.”
The lawsuit claims that OpenAI pursued a strategy of secretly harvesting vast amounts of personal data from the internet after its restructuring in 2019. The plaintiffs argue that, without this alleged theft of private and copyrighted information, the AI products, including ChatGPT, would not have become the multi-billion-dollar business they are today.
The plaintiffs are seeking damages for themselves and any potential members of the proposed classes, which could include anyone whose information was allegedly scraped. The lawsuit also requests the court to order the defendants to disgorge profits earned through the alleged illegal data scraping.
Web scraping involves using automated bots, often referred to as “crawlers,” to collect data from the internet. The lawsuit contends that OpenAI and Microsoft knowingly engaged in “illegal” scraping activity.
A similar class-action lawsuit, making nearly identical claims against OpenAI and Microsoft, was filed in the same court district on June 28th. It remains uncertain whether the court or the defendants will consider consolidating the two cases.
This is not the first time Microsoft has been involved in a lawsuit related to scraping. In 2019, the company issued a cease-and-desist order on behalf of LinkedIn against data analytics company HiQ over its data scraping practices. Microsoft and LinkedIn alleged that HiQ had violated the terms of service agreement required for access to user data on LinkedIn. While the initial ruling favored HiQ, subsequent appeals led to a settlement with Microsoft, resulting in HiQ ceasing its scraping activities.
Both Microsoft and OpenAI have yet to respond to requests for comment on this latest lawsuit.
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