Lawsuit against LinkedIn over AI training with customer data dropped

The lawsuit against LinkedIn, alleging it used customer information for AI model training, has been withdrawn.

In a statement, Sarah Wight, legal VP, litigation, competition and enforcement at LinkedIn called the lawsuit "baseless" and that it is important to "always set the record straight." 

"Sharing the good news that a baseless lawsuit against LinkedIn was withdrawn earlier today. It falsely alleged that LinkedIn shared private member messages with third parties for AI training purposes. We never did that," said Wight in a statement. 

Don't miss: LinkedIn sued for training AI models using customer information

The lawsuit against LinkedIn first came to light when its premium customers filed a proposed class action against the platform on 25 January. In the legal documents seen by MARKETING-INTERACTIVE, the customers claimed that LinkedIn shared private messages to third parties without permission and that disclosed details were used to train generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) models. 

In addition, the class action suit claimed that LinkedIn had quietly introduced a privacy setting last August that allowed users to enable or disable the sharing of their personal data. Customers then said that the platform quietly updated its privacy policy in September to state their shared data could be used to train AI models. 

A "frequently asked questions" hyperlink stated that withdrawing from the feature would not affect the training that had already occurred. 

The suit sought unspecified damages for breach of contract and violations of California's unfair competition law, as well as US$1,000 per customer for violations of the federal Stored Communications Act.

In conversations with MARKETING-INTERACTIVE at the time, a LinkedIn spokesperson said, "These are false claims with no merit".

Meanwhile, LinkedIn has filed a lawsuit against B2B data enrichment service Proxycurl and its founder for unauthorised creation of "hundreds and thousands of fake accounts" and scraping "millions of LinkedIn member profiles", according to Wight.

In a LinkedIn statement, Wight said that Proxycurl's actions directly violate LinkedIn's user agreement. "When necessary, we take legal actions as part of our commitment to preserve the integrity of our platform and keep control of member data where it belongs – in members’ hands. We are always working to advance our legal and technical anti-abuse efforts, and we’ll continue to update you on our work to keep members safe," stated Wight.

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