Keker, Van Nest & Peters won a significant victory for Google in a proposed class action alleging that Google’s AI customer service tools recorded calls and used them to train AI models in violation of the California Invasion of Privacy Act, Bloomberg Law, Law360, and Courthouse News Service reported.
Stating that there were “no factual allegations” about whether Google’s Cloud Contact Center AI tools intended to listen to the calls without the plaintiffs’ consent, U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin of the Northern District of California dismissed claims brought by three consumers who called Home Depot. The court also found that plaintiffs failed to plausibly allege lack of consent because they had agreed to a Home Depot privacy policy disclosing that call recordings could be shared with service providers.
“When pressed at oral argument, plaintiffs’ counsel could not identify any reason the privacy policy does not give consent to Google to listen to calls as a service provider for Home Depot, and the complaint affirmatively alleges that Google does use the calls to provide services to Home Depot,” Lin wrote.
In a separate order, Judge Lin required three other plaintiffs to pursue their claims in arbitration under agreements they had entered into with Verizon, Uber, and Discover. The court held that Google could enforce those agreements because the plaintiffs’ claims were intertwined with the agreements and related privacy policies.
The KVP team includes Ben Berkowitz, Matan Shacham, Christina Lee, Ian Kanig, Montae Langston London, Stephanie Goldberg, Carlos Martinez, and Alexa Daugherty.
Read the Law360, Bloomberg Law, and Courthouse News Service articles. (subscription required)
