A prism laboratoriesin charge of the photo editing application Lens, is facing a class action lawsuit filed by a group of Illinois citizens in the United States. According to the complaint, the company illegally collected biometric data of users, violating Illinois Privacy and Biometrics Law (BIPA).

Claim found on the site petapixelrefers to the process of gathering facial geometry information through the Magic Avatars feature, which is allegedly used to train Prisma’s artificial intelligence (AI) neural networks and illegally store data.

Advocate tone Hanson, which filed the suit, argued that facial geometry is a unique and immutable identifier deserving adequate legal protection. He also stressed that millions of people unwittingly provided Prisma Labs with their biometric data when downloading the program.

Last year, Lensa was furious about its ability to turn photos of celebrities and anonymous people into avatars and artwork drawn by artificial intelligence. However, the app has been criticized for collecting copyrighted online images during the editing process and over-sexualizing female images. In order to use the app’s features, users need to upload at least 10 selfies and allow access to photos, which according to the complaint would allow data to be extracted without consent.

Data collection processes are not uncommon

The Lensa controversy is another example of the ethical and legal issues surrounding the collection of biometric data by tech companies. The Illinois Biometrics Privacy and Information Act is considered one of the strictest privacy laws in the United States and has resulted in lawsuits against other internet giants. facebook in 2015, an agreement on which was reached only in 2021. clearview THEREthe facial recognition system used by law enforcement was another complaint about the same problem.

Prisma Labs has not yet commented on the process and possible illegally obtained information from its users.

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Source: PetaPixel

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