California Federal Court sues Google for unlawfully using Gemini AI to track and collect user data. The complaint was filed on Tuesday in San Jose, California. According to the report, Google is breaching the California Invasion of Privacy Act of 1967, which restricts unauthorized monitoring and recording of sensitive communications without approval from everyone involved.
As the complaint explains, “access and exploit the entire recorded history of its users’ private communications, including literally every email and attachment sent and received in their Gmail accounts.” As a recommendation, the court has proposed a class-action against Google and asked the company to allow users to disable Gemini while revising the privacy settings to disable the tool.
Notably, Gmail, Chat, and Meet users were allowed to activate the AI assistant previously. However, in October, Alphabet came up with an AI program that ‘secretly’ turned Gemini on for all applications of Google. This step enabled Google to access and collect personal data ‘without the users’ knowledge or consent.’
Simply put, the lawsuit against Google alleges that the tech giant is keeping a track of every message and email with the integration of Gemini in every platform. The messages include all communicated information, such as text, files, links, and attachments.
Significant to mention that Gemini is Google’s advanced AI tool with multimodal abilities that help users in resolving complex queries, like reasoning, coding, and math. Activating it on Google’s platforms surely solidifies collaboration across teams. But the emerging privacy concerns may act to disable the tool alongside ensure seeking appropriate consent from users to enable it.
What Google Has to Say About the Allegations?
Google has not issued an official statement yet highlighting the privacy violation allegations. Nevertheless, the lawsuit has triggered major privacy concerns among users regarding AI models. This may further necessitate thorough investigation amongst prevalent AI assistants on the grounds of breaching privacy and legal provisions.
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