Lawsuit filed against LinkedIn over AI
LinkedIn faces a class action lawsuit from Premium users for sharing their private messages with third parties for training artificial intelligence models without permission.
According to the lawsuit filed in San Jose federal court, LinkedIn quietly introduced a privacy setting in August allowing users to opt in or out of data sharing.
On September eighteenth, the company updated its privacy policy stating that data could be used for training artificial intelligence models. In the FAQ section, it noted that opting out “does not affect training that has already occurred.”
Plaintiffs claim this attempt to “cover tracks” indicates LinkedIn’s awareness of user privacy violations.
The lawsuit is filed on behalf of millions of LinkedIn Premium users who sent or received InMail messages before September eighteenth. Plaintiffs seek compensation for contract breach, California unfair competition law violations, and one thousand dollars per person for violations of federal communications storage law. LinkedIn called the accusations “baseless claims without merit.”
It seems LinkedIn decided that since users share information on the professional network, they can share it with their artificial intelligence and third-party AI models. Though they forgot to ask users’ opinion about this.
