Northern District of California Allows CIPA Claims Against AI Pizza Ordering Assistant to Proceed

On August 11, 2025, Judge Susan Illston of the Northern District of California denied a motion to dismiss in Taylor v. ConverseNow Technologies, Inc. (Case No. 25-cv-00990-SI), allowing claims under California’s Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) Sections 631 and 632 to move forward against an AI voice assistant provider. ConverseNow provides artificial intelligence voice assistant technology that restaurants, including Domino’s, use to answer phone calls, process orders and capture customer information. The plaintiff alleged that when she placed a pizza order by phone, her call was intercepted and routed through ConverseNow’s servers, where her name, address and credit card details were recorded without her knowledge or consent. Read the full Alert on the Duane Morris website.

How Are Courts Approaching Copyrighted Materials and Artificial Intelligence?

Two groundbreaking decisions from the Northern District of California—Kadrey v. Meta Platforms, Inc. and Bartz v. Anthropic PBC—shed light on how courts are approaching the use of copyrighted materials in training large language models (LLMs). Both cases involved authors alleging copyright infringement based on the use of their books to train generative AI models, and both courts held that use of the copyrighted materials to train the AI models was transformative. The court in Anthropic held, however, that copying pirated books constitutes copyright infringement and the transformative nature of the use did not rescue such infringement. Conversely, the Meta court held that copying from pirate sites to train AI is fair use, but only because the plaintiffs failed to submit evidence of market harm, which the court believed to be the most relevant factor. As such, while use of copyrighted works to train AI may be fair use, copying works without permission carries the risk of infringement. Read the full Alert on the Duane Morris website.

The Convergence of Artificial Intelligence & Crypto

This article, authored by Duane Morris partner Agatha Liu, was originally published by the California Lawyers AssociationThis article has been reprinted with permission.

The nation is well positioned to further develop artificial intelligence (AI) and promote its application, while the government renews its interest in cryptocurrency (crypto) as a significant part of digital assets. Both AI application and crypto hold huge potential to advance collective prosperity, yet they are rooted in complex, disruptive technologies that pose significant challenges for policymakers. Traditionally, the two fields have followed separate trajectories, but their convergence is increasingly evident.

Read the full article on the Duane Morris website.

Using Artificial Intelligence Tools During Interviews

Duane Morris partner Alex Karasik is quoted in the Law360 article, “3 Tips For Employers Using AI Interviewing Tools.”

He tells Law360 “that while aggressive regulation or litigation from the federal level seems unlikely in the near future, employers still need to be proactive about potential AI bias because states and the plaintiffs bar are homing in.

“Even though AI-related technologies are streamlining employment processes exponentially by the day, there still is a required human element[.] Because a human needs to be able to understand when these unique one-off situations may come up, where an applicant or employee needs an accommodation. And a human needs to have the agility to adapt and apply that accommodation request appropriately and lawfully.”

Read the full article on the Law360 website.

Artificial Intelligence, the Copyright Act and Animal Law

On March 18. 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed a district court ruling that a work created with artificial intelligence (AI) using a machine cannot be registered in the name of the machine itself because the Copyright Act requires that a copyright owner be a human being.  Thaler v. Perlmutter, No. 23-5233 (D.C. Cir. Mar. 18, 2025).

In fact, the D.C. Circuit made a specific connection to animal law by citing the decision in Naruto v. Slater, 888 F.3d 418 (9th Cir. 2018), in which the Ninth Circuit held that a monkey cannot be an “author” under the Copyright Act.  And, like Thaler, animal rights groups have tried to base their arguments on dictionary definitions.  Read more on the Animal Law Developments Blog.

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The opinions expressed on this blog are those of the author and are not to be construed as legal advice.

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