--- title: "Lawsuit Claims Google Is Vacuuming Up People’s Whole Lives to Train AI" description: "Everything and Anything Lawsuits against AI companies for their training and data practices continue to pile up. And this time, Google's the one in the hot seat. As Reuters reports, a class action lawsuit is accusing Google of \"secretly stealing everything ever created and shared on the internet by hundreds of millions of Americans\" in […]" date: "2023-07-14" modified: "2023-07-14" authors: - name: "Maggie Harrison Dupré" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/mharrison" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/lawsuit-google-train-ai" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Google" tags: - "ai" - "ai training" - "Google" - "the digest" --- # Lawsuit Claims Google Is Vacuuming Up People’s Whole Lives to Train AI ![Lawsuits against AI companies for their AI training and data practices continue to pile up. This time, Google's the one in the hot seat.]() *Close up of digital eye with layered graphics \Image: Getty Images\* ## Everything and Anything Lawsuits against AI companies for their training and data practices [continue to pile up](). And this time, Google's the one in the hot seat. As [*Reuters* reports](), a class action [lawsuit]() is accusing Google of "secretly stealing everything ever created and shared on the internet by hundreds of millions of Americans" in order to train its AI models. Filed on Tuesday in San Francisco by the Clarkson Law Firm — which, notably, filed a [very similar class action case]() against ChatGPT maker OpenAI just two weeks ago — the suit claims Google could owe at least five billion dollars in restitution for vacuuming up our online lives, from social media albums to blog posts to published novels, and using that data to train AI systems. "Google has taken all our personal and professional information, our creative and copywritten works, our photographs, and even our emails — virtually the entirety of our digital footprint," reads the lawsuit. "For years, Google harvested this data in secret," it continues, "without notice or consent from anyone." ## Terms of Service In a statement to *Reuters*, the plaintiffs' attorney, Ryan Clarkson, doubled down on the suit's accusations. "Google does not own the internet," said Clarkson, "it does not own our creative works, it does not own our expressions of our personhood, pictures of our families and children, or anything else simply because we share it online." To Clarkson's point, though, the search giant kind of *does* own the internet. With roughly [90 percent]() of all search market share, Google is one of the most — if not *the* most — prominent mediators of our online lives. While none of us may ever have checked a big red box that explicitly said "YES, everything I have ever shared to the internet can and should be used to train AI systems, which will eventually use my outputs to generate content," most of us have signed massive chunks of our lives and privacy away to a number of platforms in order to use the web — even if those agreements were always in the fine print. Google, for its part, seems confident that its training practices have steered clear of any wrongdoing, with Google general counsel Halimah DeLaine Prado telling *Reuters* that the search company has been "clear for years that we use data from public sources — like information published to the open web and public datasets — to train the AI models behind services like Google Translate, responsibly and in line with our AI Principles." "American law supports using public information to create new beneficial uses," she added, "and we look forward to refuting these baseless claims." **More on AI lawsuits:** [*OpenAI Sued for Using Everybody's Writing to Train AI*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping the media industry, and more broadly how those dynamics are changing how we all consume and share information and relate to one another. I'm also fascinated by public health policy and ethics, the role of emerging tech in politics and governance — and the powerful people and forces at those intersections — climate change, and the environment. My investigation on Sports Illustrated's use of AI-generated authors with fictional biographies won a 2024 Mirror Award for "Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media" from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School, I contributed to Niemen Lab's 2025 Predictions for Journalism series, and I've discussed my work for Futurism during appearances on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, and more. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I played Division I field hockey for the Minutewomen as a midfielder. Since then, I've lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Manhattan, New York. I spend my free time running, reading, perusing archival fashion, and searching for the world’s best negroni. I also have a debonair tuxedo cat, Westley, who's named after "The Princess Bride." ### Author social links [Bluesky]()