OpenAI, Maker of ChatGPT, Hit With Proposed Class Action Lawsuit Alleging it Stole People’s Data
OpenAI, the organization responsible for the widely-known ChatGPT tool, is facing a lawsuit accusing the company of stealing and misusing substantial amounts of personal data obtained from the internet to train its AI models.
The proposed class action lawsuit, filed in a California federal court, asserts that OpenAI covertly scraped and appropriated vast quantities of personal data from the internet without consent, notice, or fair compensation. The extensive 160-page complaint claims that OpenAI’s data collection occurred on an unprecedented scale.
As of now, OpenAI and its major investor, Microsoft, have not responded to requests for comment regarding the lawsuit.
The lawsuit, brought forward by Clarkson, a law firm, alleges that OpenAI’s products utilize stolen private information, including personally identifiable details from millions of internet users, including minors, without informed consent or knowledge.
In response, the complaint seeks injunctive relief in the form of a temporary halt on further commercial use of OpenAI’s products. Additionally, it calls for the payment of “data dividends” to individuals whose information was used to train OpenAI’s tools.
OpenAI gained significant attention with the launch of ChatGPT, a tool celebrated for its human-like responses to user prompts. This success triggered an apparent race among tech companies to develop and integrate AI tools into various products.
