Alessandro De La Torre, the plaintiff, filed a notice of dismissal without prejudice in a federal court in San Jose, California, just nine days after he initially sued LinkedIn. This came after the company argued that the lawsuit lacked any real basis.
De La Torre alleged that LinkedIn broke its promise to use personal data solely to enhance its services by sharing users' messages with third parties working on AI. The complaint pointed out that LinkedIn disclosed this unauthorized sharing when it updated its privacy policy in September, and mentioned that a new setting to stop data sharing wouldn’t change anything for past AI training.
"LinkedIn's belated disclosures here left consumers rightly concerned and confused about what was being used to train AI," Eli Wade-Scott, managing partner at Edelson PC, which represented De La Torre, said in an email on Friday.
"Users can take comfort, at least, that LinkedIn has shown us evidence that it did not use their private messages to do that," he added. "We appreciate the professionalism of LinkedIn's team."
On Thursday, Sarah Wight, a lawyer and VP at the company, took to LinkedIn to clarify that they never shared customers' private messages for AI training. "We never did that," she stated.