ChatGPT lawsuit alleges that consumers’ private information was secretly scraped from the web.
Last week, plaintiffs in California filed a class action lawsuit against OpenAI, the technology company behind ChatGPT. The ChatGPT lawsuit reports 15 causes of action. Most notably, OpenAI allegedly used individuals’ private data to train artificial intelligence systems without consent or compensation.
Plaintiffs claim that OpenAI harvested hordes of information across many online applications and websites. From these sites, the lawsuit alleges that names, contact details, email addresses, payment information, social media information, chat log data, usage data, analytics, and cookies were unlawfully scraped during ChatGPT development.
Beyond $3 billion in compensation, the plaintiffs are calling for increased AI governance and open access to all personal information collected by OpenAI. Further, the lawsuit calls for consumers to be able to opt out of data collection and to be compensated for how OpenAI used their information.
We need to regulate how ChatGPT and similar systems gather and use data. Currently, ChatGPT continues to collects data directly from users, and it’s still unclear what OpenAI does with that information. With more consumer-facing AI systems poised to hit the market, regulating how companies use our data has never been more pressing.
Did you know that hundreds of companies you’ve never heard of make billions of dollars every year selling people’s personal information online -- probably including yours?
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