Google Wanted Spirit Airlines Data. Flight Attendants Found a Way to Opt Out
The Association of Flight Attendants has reached a deal with Google to ensure that employee data from the defunct Spirit Airlines is de-identified before being sold to the tech giant. This agreement sets a precedent for protecting worker privacy in the sale of corporate data for AI training.
Why it matters
As companies increasingly sell internal data to train AI models, this case highlights the urgent need for legal frameworks that protect employee privacy.
A new, multibillion-dollar industry is dedicated to selling and buying work files and emails to companies seeking fresh sources of data to improve their AI models, and it’s only getting bigger. Data privacy laws tend to focus on consumer protections and rarely consider the rights of workers who create that information. What happens when your doctor’s notes, employee contracts, and Slack gossip are fed into the machine?
An agreement reached this week between Google and a union representing an unlikely workforce—flight attendants—could reveal a more permanent answer by creating a process that might reliably separate the data that workers produce from their own personal information. A judge still needs to approve the agreement next week.
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