Libbie Canter, Lindsey Tonsager, and Priya Leeds of Covington and Burling write:
In 2020, Illinois residents whose photos were included in the Diversity in Faces dataset brought a series of lawsuits against multiple technology companies, including IBM, Facefirst, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google alleging violations of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act.[1] In the years since, the cases against IBM and FaceFirst were dismissed at the agreement of both parties, while the cases against Microsoft, Amazon, and most recently, Google were dismissed at summary judgment.
These cases are unique in the landscape of BIPA litigation because in all instances, defendants are not alleged to have had direct contact with the plaintiffs. Instead, plaintiffs alleged that defendants used a dataset of photos created by IBM (the Diversity in Faces, or DiF, dataset) which allegedly included images publicly made available by photo-sharing website Flickr.
Read more at InsidePrivacy.