Amazon, Microsoft Say Facial Recognition Lawsuits Mistarget Them

Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. say an Illinois biometric privacy law doesn’t apply to suits that claim the companies used photos without permission to develop facial recognition technology.

Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act doesn’t apply to company conduct outside of that state, Amazon and Microsoft said in filings Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.

The photos at issue are part of International Business Machines Corp.'s “diversity in faces” dataset, which has been made available for research to eradicate racial and gender bias in facial recognition. Two people leading two potential class actions claim their ...