First-Class Action Lawsuit against OpenAI- The court approved to the plaintiffs to sue OpenAi in Israel, and therefore acquired jurisdiction over the lawsuit.

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL, April 27, 2023/EINPresswire.com/ -- The District Court in Israel approved suing OpenAI in a Class Action lawsuit in Israel

A First-Class Action Lawsuit (1528-04-23) against OpenAI- the developer and operator of ChatGPT was filed in Israel. The court in Israel approved this week to the plaintiffs to sue OpenAi in Israel, and therefore acquired jurisdiction over the lawsuit.

From the lawsuit: OpenAI has abandoned its responsibilities towards its users, which as a result can cause a catastrophe. Minors are able to log in and use ChatGPT without any limitations and can be exposed to inappropriate content.

OpenAI has illegally reserved the right to forward users’ personal information to an unlimited amount of third parties, as it sees fit and without prior permission of the users.

Essentially, the company maintains an enormous database that includes personal information of tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Israelis- the usage of this information by the company constitutes a strict breach of their privacy.

A Motion for Certification of Class Action has been filed in the district court in Lod, Israel (Class Action 1528-04-23) - for the approval of a class action against OpenAI which operates the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, claiming privacy breaches, data collection, and illegal usage of users’ information, specifically minors, and keeping an unregistered database.

The lawsuit was filed by Shaul Zioni, Eli Pillersdorf, Reut Zaitelbach and Chen Neeman, from Zioni Pillersdorf Phillip Advocates firm. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of all the Israeli chat’s users and specifically minors.

Shaul Zioni, one of the lawyers filing the lawsuit, stated, “The lawsuit addresses that the AI program is a powerful tool, and the data which can be extracted from it can have a strong impact on the behavior of its hundreds of millions of users. Therefore, it would be expected that OpenAI would take strong precautionary measures and ensure that all users would, in the least, be of appropriate age and that there would be strict measures to safeguard the users’ privacy. However, due to the “race” run by OpenAI in order to be the first in the world that introduce an AI program, it completely abandoned its obligations toward the users in several aspects. Those violations of responsibilities can cause a catastrophe, nothing more, nothing less, concerning the rights of users in the AI realm. It is not coincidence that in the last few weeks, there has been a general outcry to halt the development of these dangerous products.

The lawsuit claims that although OpenAI has established in its terms of use that the usage of the chatbot is prohibited for users under the age of 13, or children under the age of 18 without a guardian’s consent, in reality, there is no part in the registration process which asks for a parent or guardian’s consent and so essentially minors are able to log in and freely use ChatGPT with no limitations and be exposed to inappropriate content. According to the plaintiffs, this constitutes an illegal and irresponsible behavior on part of OpenAI, especially since OpenAI has admitted that it occasionally provides false responses and presents dishonest and negative content - as a result of not having a reliable source of truth. Thus, when a question is unclear or ambiguous the program will generally guess and sometimes respond to harmful instructions or exhibit biased behavior.

Additionally, the lawsuit explains that OpenAI admitted that it uses its large collection of users’ data including that of minors, which also accounts for the content of the chats, for the “purpose of quality assurance”. However, OpenAI doesn’t specify exactly what usage is made with this data, how it is safeguarded and secured, and how long it keeps it. OpenAI does mention that it “may” share personal data with “third parties” without the user’s prior permission, but it does not clarify who these anonymous “third parties” are- rather they are vaguely described ,by non-telling terms such as, “providers” or “business partners” thus reserving the right, unlawfully, to forward users’ personal information to an unlimited amount of third parties as it sees fit and without prior consent.

It was also claimed in the lawsuit that OpenAI possesses an enormous database that includes the personal information of tens if not hundreds of thousands of Israelis, including minors. Because ChatGPT’s interface is in the context of a conversation in which users can ask for advice or present questions of all sorts, the content of the chat contains, according to the Plaintiffs, sensitive and extremely private information. Taking this into account, as well as OpenAI’s failure to disclose the nature of their usage of the collected data and who it will be shared with, for how long is it stored, which security measures are taken, as well as the fact that the users have not given permission to share their data- OpenAI effectively is in violation of the users’ privacy.

The lawsuit was filed just several days after the Italian data protection authority’s investigation of ChatGPT and its decision to temporarily block it due to the strong concerns of users' privacy violations and a lack of filter mechanisms surrounding verification of users being above the age of 13. Similarly, on March 29, 2023, a letter from 1,500 technology leaders including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak was published demanding a six-month pause to the ״rollout” of ChatGPT4, due to the hidden dangers of the irresponsible development of this software to mankind.

Ronan Kaplan
Hirshman Communications
+972 54-314-1232
nir@nirshman.com
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