On January 31, a proposed class action alleging that Microsoft's LinkedIn breached the privacy of numerous Premium customers by sharing their private messages to train artificial intelligence models has been dismissed.
Plaintiff Alessandro De La Torre voluntarily dismissed the case without prejudice in a federal court in San Jose, California. This occurred nine days after LinkedIn stated that the lawsuit lacked merit.
De La Torre claimed that LinkedIn violated its commitment to solely utilize personal customer data to enhance its services, alleging that customers' messages were shared with third parties for AI development.
Following a privacy policy update in September, LinkedIn reportedly disclosed this unauthorized data sharing and assured that a new account setting to prevent such sharing would not impact previous AI training.
Eli Wade-Scott, managing partner at Edelson PC, representing De La Torre, expressed concern over LinkedIn's delayed disclosure, causing confusion and distrust among consumers regarding the use of their data for AI training.
Despite this, Wade-Scott acknowledged LinkedIn's assurance that private messages were not used for this purpose, stating, "Users... that LinkedIn has shown us evidence that it did not use their private messages." He also acknowledged LinkedIn's professional handling of the situation.
In a statement on LinkedIn, Sarah Wight, the company's Vice President and lawyer, affirmed that LinkedIn never shared customers' private messages for AI training, emphasizing, "We never did that."