Amazon Defends Its Review of IBM Biometrics Dataset From Lawsuit

Amazon told a Washington federal court it didn’t violate Illinois privacy law when it evaluated IBM’s Diversity in Faces dataset, because it didn’t actually use or benefit from it, which contained photos of Illinois residents.

Amazon is one of four companies to have been targeted with lawsuits after allegedly using the IBM dataset, a collection of publicly available photos used to advance the accuracy of facial recognition technology. The suits claim that the companies violated Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act, which requires written consent before collecting, using, and storing someone’s biometric data.

Google, Microsoft, and FaceFirst were ...