OpenAI, the artificial intelligence (AI) company behind ChatGPT, has been hit with a lawsuit alleging it misu⛎sed vast quantities of internet users’ private data to train its AI tools.

The suit was filed yesterday in a California federal court by Clarkson, a Malibu-based public interest law firm that in the past has initiated class-action lawsuits on issues ranging from employment disputes to data breaches and antitrust laws. Its mission, as stated on the firm’s website, involves "focusing on mass actions that help create a more fair, equitable, and just society for everyone."

This lawsuit, according to the court filing, "arises from Defendants’ [OpenAI] unlawful and harmful conduct in developing, marketing, and operating their AI products, which use stolen private information from hundreds of millions of internet users without their informed consent or knowledge."

In the suit, Clarkson alleged OpenAI collects, stores, and discloses everything from users' names, contact information, login credentials, internet searches, social media information, and geolocation. By collecting the personal data of millions and misappropriating it to develop a volatile, untested technology, OpenAI "put everyone in a zone of risk that is incalculable, but unacceptable by any measure of responsible data protection and use," said Clarkson partner Timothy Giordano in the filing.

Given most AI applications are still in their early development stages, the legality of using data taken from the 🍨internet to train AI tools remains uncleaꦍr, and a framework defining fair practices has yet to be developed and institutionalized.

Some developers have argued that pulling data from the internet should be considered 'fair use,' a concept in copyright law that creates an exception to the use of private data as long as the material is changed in a 'transformative' way.

OpenAI isn’t alone in being accused of mishandling users’ data or mining public databases to train its AI tools. Tech giants such as Facebook parent Meta Platforms (META), Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL), Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), and Microsoft (MSFT) have faced numerous such lawsuits in recent years. Last month, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission fined Meta Platforms 1.2 billion euros ($1.31 billion) for illegally transferring European internet users’ data to the United States.

However, Clarkson chose to go after OpenAI "because of its role in spurring bigger rivals to push out their own AI when it captured the public’s imagination with ChatGPT last year," the firm said in an interview with the Washington Post.

"They’re the company that ignited this AI arms race," Clarkson added.