By Jonathan Stempel
(Reuters) – A collective appeal project accusing Microsoft (Msft) Linkedin to violate the privacy of millions of premium customers by disclosing their private messages to train generative artificial intelligence models has been rejected.
The applicant Alessandro de la Torre made a notice of dismissal without prejudice on Thursday before the Federal Court of San Jose, California, nine days after prosecuting Linkedin, and after the company declared that the trial had no merit.
De la Torre has accused the social media platform focused on companies to break a promise to use personal customer data only to improve its services, by sharing customer messages with third parties involved in AI.
The complaint indicated that LinkedIn revealed unauthorized sharing when he updated his privacy policy in September and said that a new account parameter to prevent data sharing would not affect the previous training of the ‘Ia.
“LinkedIn’s late disclosure here left consumers rightly concerned and confused by what was used to train AI,” Eli Wade-Scott, director of Edelson PC, who represented Torre on Friday.
“Users can comfort themselves, at least, that Linkedin has shown us evidence that he did not use their private messages to do so,” he added. “We appreciate the professionalism of the LinkedIn team.”
In an article in LinkedIn on Thursday, Sarah Wight, lawyer and vice-president of the company, confirmed that Linkedin had not disclosed private messages from customers for AI training. “We have never done this,” she said.
(Report by Jonathan Stempel in New York; edition by Bill Berkrot)
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