ChatGPT creator OpenAI Inc. has been sued for stealing “vast amounts” of personal information to train its AI models in an imprudent hunt for profits. The owner of ChatGPT and Microsoft have been sued and hit by a $3bn (£2.4bn) class action lawsuit over the alleged theft of data from hundreds of millions of internet users. Together with Microsoft, its major backer, the company was sued on Wednesday by 16 pseudonymous individuals who claim the companies’ AI products based on ChatGPT, collected and divulged their personal information without adequate notice or consent.
The legal claim alleges OpenAI, which built the digital chatbot, and investor Microsoft developed the AI tools by “secret scraping of the internet”. The complaint filed in federal court in California, alleges the two businesses ignored the legal means of obtaining data for their AI models and chose to gather it without paying for it.
Fearing a backslash, the petitioners are described by their occupations or interests, but identified only by initials, the Clarkson Law Firm said in the lawsuit. They cite $3 billion in potential damages, based on a category of harmed individuals they estimate to be in the millions.
OpenAI data theft lawsuit
OpenAI has violated privacy laws by secretly and systematically scraping 300 billion words from the internet, tapping “books, articles, websites and posts including personal information obtained without consent,” OpenAI did so without registering as a data broker as it was required to do under applicable law.” according to the rather large 157-page lawsuit.
According to the lawsuit, OpenAI and Microsoft, through their AI products, “collect, store, track, share, and disclose” the personal information of millions of people, including product details, account information, names, contact details, login credentials, emails, payment information, transaction records, browser data, social media information, chat logs, usage data, analytics, cookies, searches, and other online activity.
The lawsuit also accusing the companies of risking “civilizational collapse”, giving the extent of information it has collected, stored and processed in its AI products.
“With respect to personally identifiable information, defendants fail sufficiently to filter it out of the training models, putting millions at risk of having that information disclosed on prompt or otherwise to strangers around the world,” the complaint says, citing The Register’s March 18, 2021, special report on the subject.
The 157-page complaint is heavy on media and academic citations, expressing alarm about AI models and ethics but light on specific instances of harm. A spokesperson is yet to respond for both OpenAI and Microsoft on the $3 billion lawsuit.
Doubt surrounding AI
While ChatGPT, is undeniably a tremendously fascinating piece of technology, there are significant concerns that it and other generative AI applications have accompanying consequences especially regarding privacy and misinformation.
Globally, experts, businesses, organizations and governments have begun to take steps to limit its usage. Currently, the US Congress is debating the potential and dangers of AI as the products raise questions about the future of creative industries and the ability to tell fact from fiction.
Just a few months ago, the leaders of OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, also called for stricter regulations for “super intelligent” AIs in order to save the world from destruction in the hands of these machines.
Increasing doubt has surrounded the global development and acceptance of generative AI. This is even more heightened by the latest scrapping of people’s information and data by OpenAI.
ChatGPT alleged misuse of private data
Misappropriating personal data on a vast scale to win an “AI arms race,” the petitioners claim that OpenAI illegally accesses private information from individuals’ interactions with its products and from applications that have integrated ChatGPT. Such integrations allow the company to gather image and location data from Snapchat, music preferences on Spotify, financial information from Stripe and private conversations on Slack and Microsoft Teams.
Chasing profits, OpenAI has abandoned its original principle of advancing AI “in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole,” as per the petitioner. The data theft lawsuit puts OpenAI’s expected revenue for 2023 at $200 million.
