A new lawsuit filed in the U.S. claims that LinkedIn has been sharing its Premium users’ private messages with third parties to train artificial intelligence (AI) models, without proper consent. The legal action, initiated on behalf of a LinkedIn Premium user, alleges that in August 2024, the platform introduced a privacy setting that automatically enrolled users into a program allowing third parties to access their personal data for AI training purposes.

The lawsuit further accuses LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft, of attempting to conceal these actions by altering its privacy policy a month later to include a clause allowing user data disclosure for AI training. Critics argue that these changes were made without adequately informing users and violated privacy agreements.

LinkedIn denied the allegations, calling them “false claims with no merit.” The company also clarified that users could opt-out of data sharing, but only for future training—not retroactively. The lawsuit claims this change was part of a strategy to “cover its tracks” after violating privacy standards.

The suit seeks $1,000 per user for breaches of the U.S. federal Stored Communications Act, along with additional claims under California’s unfair competition law. LinkedIn has denied enabling data sharing for AI in the UK, European Economic Area, and Switzerland.

With over one billion global users, LinkedIn continues to add AI-powered features, contributing to a surge in Premium subscriptions, which generated $1.7 billion in 2023.

Source: BBC News