{"id":1608,"date":"2024-06-28T11:38:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-28T15:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/classactiondefense\/?p=1608"},"modified":"2024-06-28T12:11:34","modified_gmt":"2024-06-28T16:11:34","slug":"california-federal-court-rejects-ai-class-action-plaintiffs-cherry-picking-of-ai-algorithm-test-results-and-orders-production-of-all-results-and-account-settings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/classactiondefense\/2024\/06\/28\/california-federal-court-rejects-ai-class-action-plaintiffs-cherry-picking-of-ai-algorithm-test-results-and-orders-production-of-all-results-and-account-settings\/","title":{"rendered":"California Federal Court Rejects AI Class Action Plaintiffs\u2019 Cherry-Picking Of AI Algorithm Test Results And Orders Production Of All Results And Account Settings"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>By Gerald L. Maatman, Jr., Justin R. Donoho, and Brandon Spurlock<\/strong><\/p>\n

Duane Morris Takeaways<\/em><\/strong>:\u00a0 On June 24, 2024, Magistrate Judge Robert Illman of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ordered a group of authors alleging copyright infringement by a maker of generative artificial intelligence to produce information relating to pre-suit algorithmic testing in Tremblay v. OpenAI, Inc., No. 23-CV-3223 (N.D. Cal. June 13, 2024).\u00a0 The ruling<\/a> is significant as it shows that plaintiffs who file class action complaints alleging improper use of AI and relying on cherry-picked results from their testing of the AI-based algorithms at issue cannot simultaneously withhold during discovery their negative testing results and the account settings used to produce any results.\u00a0 The Court\u2019s reasoning applies not only in gen AI cases, but also other AI cases such as website advertising technology cases. <\/em><\/p>\n

Background<\/strong><\/p>\n

This case is one of over a dozen class actions filed in the last two years alleging that makers of generative AI technologies violated copyright laws by training their algorithms on copyrighted content, or that they violated wiretapping, data privacy, and other laws by training their algorithms on personal information.<\/p>\n

It is also one of the hundreds of class actions filed in the last two years involving AI technologies that perform not only gen AI but also facial recognition or other facial analysis, website advertising, profiling, automated decision making, educational operations, clinical medicine, and more.<\/p>\n

In Tremblay v. OpenAI<\/em>, plaintiffs (a group of authors) allege that an AI company trained its algorithm by \u201ccopying massive amounts of text\u201d to enable it to \u201cemit convincingly naturalistic text outputs in response to user prompts.\u201d\u00a0 Id. <\/em>at 1.\u00a0 Plaintiffs allege these outputs include summaries that are so accurate that the algorithm must retain knowledge of the ingested copyrighted works in order to output similar textual content.\u00a0 Id. <\/em>at 2.\u00a0 An exhibit to the complaint displaying the algorithm\u2019s prompts and outputs purports to support these allegations.\u00a0 Id. <\/em><\/p>\n

The AI company sought discovery of (a) the account settings; and (b) the algorithm\u2019s prompts and outputs that \u201cdid not<\/em>\u201d include the plaintiffs\u2019 \u201cpreferred, cherry-picked\u201d results.\u00a0 Id. <\/em>(emphasis in original).\u00a0 The plaintiffs refused, citing work-product privilege, which protects from discovery documents prepared in anticipation of litigation or for trial.\u00a0 The AI company argued that the authors waived that protection by revealing their preferred prompts and outputs, and asked the court to order production of the negative prompts and outputs, too, and all related account settings.\u00a0 Id. <\/em>at 2-3.<\/p>\n

The Court\u2019s Decision<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Court agreed with the AI company and ordered production of the account settings and all of plaintiffs\u2019 pre-suit algorithmic testing results, including any negative ones, for four reasons.<\/p>\n

First, the Court held that the algorithmic testing results were not work product but \u201cmore in the nature of bare facts.\u201d\u00a0 Id. <\/em>at 5-6.<\/p>\n

Second, the Court determined that \u201ceven assuming arguendo<\/em>\u201d that the work-product privilege applied, the privilege was waived \u201cby placing a large subset of these facts in the [complaint].\u201d\u00a0 Id. <\/em>at 6.<\/p>\n

Third, the Court reasoned that the negative testing results were relevant to the AI company\u2019s defenses, notwithstanding the plaintiffs\u2019 argument that the negative testing results were irrelevant to their claims.\u00a0 Id. <\/em>at 6.<\/p>\n

Finally, the Court rejected the plaintiffs\u2019 argument that the AI company can simply interrogate the algorithm itself.\u00a0 As the Court explained, \u201cwithout knowing the account settings used by Plaintiffs to generate their positive and negative results, and without knowing the exact formulation of the prompts used to generate Plaintiffs\u2019 negative results, Defendants would be unable to replicate the same results.\u201d\u00a0 Id.<\/em><\/p>\n

Implications For Companies<\/strong><\/p>\n

This case is a win for defendants of class actions based on alleged outputs of AI-based algorithms.\u00a0 In such cases, the Tremblay <\/em>decision can be cited as useful precedent for seeking discovery from recalcitrant plaintiffs of all of plaintiffs\u2019 pre-suit prompts and outputs, and all related account settings.\u00a0 The court\u2019s fourfold reasoning in Tremblay <\/em>applies not only in gen AI cases but also other AI cases.\u00a0 For example, in website advertising technology (adtech) cases, plaintiffs should not be able to withhold their adtech settings (the account settings), their browsing histories and behaviors (the prompts), and all documents relating to targeted advertising they allegedly received as a result, any related purchases, and alleged damages (the outputs).\u00a0 As AI-related technologies continue their growth spurt, and litigation in this area spurts accordingly, the implications of Tremblay<\/em> may reach far and wide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Gerald L. Maatman, Jr., Justin R. Donoho, and Brandon Spurlock Duane Morris Takeaways:\u00a0 On June 24, 2024, Magistrate Judge Robert Illman of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ordered a group of authors alleging copyright infringement by a maker of generative artificial intelligence to produce information relating to pre-suit algorithmic … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “California Federal Court Rejects AI Class Action Plaintiffs\u2019 Cherry-Picking Of AI Algorithm Test Results And Orders Production Of All Results And Account Settings”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":583,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[30],"class_list":["post-1608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-privacy-class-actions"],"authors":[{"term_id":30,"user_id":583,"is_guest":0,"slug":"classactiondefense","display_name":"Class Action Defense","avatar_url":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/classactiondefense\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2020\/10\/dmlogo.jpg","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/classactiondefense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/classactiondefense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/classactiondefense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/classactiondefense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/583"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/classactiondefense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/classactiondefense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1608\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/classactiondefense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/classactiondefense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/classactiondefense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1608"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/classactiondefense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=1608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}