Lawyers square off in fight over voice data used to train AI
Lawyers are lining up in Illinois for a big test of the state’s far-reaching data privacy law in the AI era. Nine leading tech companies, including Apple, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia and Samsung, are facing lawsuits in Chicago federal court alleging they violated Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) by using thousands of hours of recorded human voices without permission to power their AI systems.
Ross Kimbarovsky of Loevy & Loevy is representing the plaintiffs – a group of journalists, podcasters and audiobook narrators – in the proposed class action lawsuits. He said each of the defendants faces hundreds of millions of dollars in potential damages.
