A proposed class action lawsuit accusing Microsoft’s LinkedIn of improperly utilizing the private data of Premium customers to train generative AI models (AI) has been voluntarily dropped.
The plaintiff dropped the lawsuit in just nine days, after it was filed at a federal court in San Jose, California, and after LinkedIn strongly denied the allegations.
A lawsuit was filed after allegations of privacy breach.
Alessandro De La Torre was the plaintiff in this case. He claimed that LinkedIn violated privacy by sharing private messages of its Premium members with third parties who were involved in AI training.
De La Torre claimed that this action was a violation of LinkedIn’s promise not to use customer data for anything other than improving its own services.
The lawsuit was triggered in September by an update to LinkedIn’s privacy policy, which revealed the use of user data for AI training models.
The update also noted a new account settings aimed at preventing the sharing of data would not affect AI training that was previously conducted, which caused concern among its users.
LinkedIn’s denial of the lawsuit and dismissal
LinkedIn issued a quick statement following the lawsuit, denying that private messages were ever used for AI training, claiming that such data had never been disclosed.
De La Torre filed a notice of dismissal with prejudice on Thursday. This effectively ended the legal action.
Plaintiff’s counsel acknowledges LinkedIn’s assurance
In an email sent on Friday to Reuters, Eli Wade-Scott stated that “LinkedIn’s late disclosures left consumers confused and rightly concerned about what was used to train AI”.
Wade-Scott acknowledged LinkedIn’s explanation as well, saying:
LinkedIn has provided evidence to users that it did use private messages for this purpose. We are impressed by the professionalism of LinkedIn.
LinkedIn official affirms data security
In a LinkedIn posting on Thursday, Sarah Wight addressed the allegations directly. She is a lawyer and vice-president of the company.
She said, “We’ve never done that”, confirming that LinkedIn didn’t use private messages of customers for AI training.
The ICD published the article LinkedIn AI data lawsuit dropped following company’s denial of misuse.
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