Google has filed a motion to dismiss a class-action lawsuit that alleges it violates the privacy and property rights of internet users by scraping data to train its AI models.

In a filing dated Oct. 16 to a California District Court, Google argued it is necessary to use public data to train its AI chatbots, including Bard. The Big Tech firm asserted that the claims are based on the false premises that it is “stealing” the information that is publicly shared on the internet. It said:

“Using publicly available information to learn is not stealing. Nor is it an invasion of privacy, conversion, negligence, unfair competition, or copyright infringement.”

Google said such a lawsuit would have an impact not just on its services but the “very idea of generative AI.”

The lawsuit against Google was filed on July 11 by eight individuals who claim to represent “millions of class members,” comprising internet users and copyright holders.

Google’s privacy policy change, which took effect a week before the lawsuit was filed, is being contested by individuals who claim that their privacy and property rights were violated. The policy allows data scraping for AI training purposes.

Google argued the complaint concerns “irrelevant conduct by third parties and doomsday predictions about AI.”

The company further claims the complaint failed to address how the plaintiffs were harmed by the use of their information.

Lawsuits filed against tech giants developing AI systems are nothing unheard of. On Sept. 20, Meta refuted claims of copyright infringement during the training of its AI.

Along with OpenAI, Microsoft has also been hit with lawsuits this year for allegedly breaking several privacy laws in developing the popular ChatGPT and other generative AI systems.