• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, February 11, 2025

Siding against Google, a federal judge ruled Monday that the company must face privacy claims over the Google Cloud Contact Center AI -- an artificial intelligence service used at call centers operated by businesses including Hulu, GoDaddy and Home Depot.

The ruling, issued by U.S. District Court Judge Rita Lin in the Northern District of California, comes in a class-action complaint brought in October 2023 by Misael Ambriz, and later joined by other plaintiffs.

They alleged that Google, through its Cloud Contact Center AI, violated California's wiretap law by secretly monitoring conversations between customers and retailers. Google allegedly used its artificial intelligence technology to transcribe and analyze the conversations, and suggest potential replies to the retailers' agents.

Google urged Lin to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing in a motion filed in November that even if the allegations were true, they wouldn't show that Google violated California's wiretap law. That law prohibits outside companies from intercepting phone calls without the consent of all participants.

Google specifically argued that the allegations, if proven, would only show that the company acted as a service provider to Home Depot, GoDaddy and Hulu. Google noted in its motion that the plaintiffs didn't allege that Google used the phone call data for its own purposes.

The plaintiffs countered that they alleged Google is capable of harnessing the conversations it monitored to improve its products and services.

Lin sided against Google, ruling that its terms of service create a “plausible inference” that the company “has the technological capability to use the data it collects and analyzes, regardless of whether it actually makes use of that data.”

Those terms provide that the company may use the phone conversations for its own purposes, with permission from the retailers.

“It would be illogical for Google to grant itself the conditional right in under its own terms of service to do something it is not capable of doing,” Lin wrote.