Siding with Google, a federal judge has dismissed a privacy complaint over its Google Cloud Contact Center AI — an artificial intelligence service that answers some customer service calls for outside companies including Home Depot.
In a ruling issued Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco essentially said that even if the allegations against Google were proven true, they would not show that the company intentionally violated the state’s wiretap law, which prohibits the interception of communications without all parties consent.
The decision came in litigation dating to 2023, when California resident Misael Ambriz alleged that Google monitored a conversation between himself and Verizon, transcribed and analyzed the conversation, and “suggested ‘smart replies’ and news articles to the Verizon agent.”
Ambriz subsequently dropped his complaint, but the litigation proceeded with other plaintiffs who filed similar cases. Three of them — James Fox, Peter Samish and Christopher Barulich — alleged that Google listened to calls between themselves and Home Depot.
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Google argued the matter should be dismissed for several reasons, including that the plaintiffs consented to the alleged interceptions by accepting Home Depot’s privacy policy, which provided that the company records phone calls and discloses them for purposes including “customer care and software-based customer care analysis.”
Lin agreed with Google’s analysis regarding Fox and Samish, who both had accounts with Home Depot, writing that they “have not plausibly alleged lack of consent because they agreed to a privacy policy that discloses that Google has access to their call
She also dismissed Barulich’s claim, though for slightly different reasons. Barulich didn’t allege that he had a Home Depot account, so Lin didn’t suggest that he consented to the alleged interceptions. But she said that even if Barulich’s allegations were true, they wouldn’t prove the company intentionally violated the state wiretap law
“While it is obvious from the complaint that Google intentionally listened to the calls — that is what the Cloud Customer Center AI product is built to do — there are no factual allegations about whether Google intended to do so without … consent,” she wrote.
She added that the complaint simply included “conclusory statements that Google ‘intentionally tapped'” calls “willfully and without the consent of all parties to the communication.”
“Those bare repetitions of the elements of the claim, without supporting factual allegations, are insufficient to state a claim,” she wrote.
The ruling allows all three plaintiffs to revise their allegations and attempt to bring the claim again.
Other plaintiffs in the litigation alleged that Google monitored calls between themselves and Verizon, Uber and Discover.
Google separately argued those cases should be sent to arbitration because Verizon, Uber and Discover require customers to arbitrate disputes.
Lin accepted that argument and ordered arbitration of those complaints.
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