A group of more than 120 US lawmakers expressed concern on the 8th over a plan by Google, a unit of Alphabet, to buy the internal data of bankrupt US budget carrier Spirit Airlines for 10 million dollars and use it to train artificial intelligence systems. The group, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Stephen Horsford, noted that the sale would include 100 million emails, 500 million messages from Microsoft's business communication tool Teams, and other employee records, and urged Google to exclude employee information from the deal as much as possible. In a statement, the lawmakers argued that technological innovation should not come at the expense of workers' privacy or the confidentiality of information they are required to provide as a condition of employment. Google says it has no intention of buying personal information. Spirit halted operations in May, and in August Google won an auction for spreadsheet and calendar data as well as marketing, productivity, and business operations data as part of the shutdown and liquidation. A privacy expert recommended on the 5th that a US bankruptcy court judge approve the deal at a hearing on October 14, on the condition that the personal information of Spirit's 97 million customers be excluded.
Alphabet Inc Class C120 US lawmakers raise privacy concerns over Google's plan to buy Spirit Airlines employee data for AI training, urging exclusions.
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