• by Wendy Davis , 4 hours ago

An Illinois resident is suing SpaceXAI's chatbot Grok for allegedly collecting and retaining faceprints without first obtaining users' written consent.

The plaintiff, a Grok user named Cesar Padilla, alleges in a class-action complaint that he uploaded selfies to Grok and asked it to create various images -- including a professional headshot.

Grok "captured biometrics" from those selfies "by automatically locating and scanning plaintiff’s face, and by extracting geometric data relating to the contours of plaintiff’s face and the proportions of, and spatial relationships among, facial landmarks, such as plaintiff’s eyes, nose, mouth, jaw, and facial contours," Padilla alleges in the complaint, filed October 7 in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

He alleges he didn't agree that Grok could collect or store his biometric information, adding that when he asked Grok to create images from his photos, he didn't know it "used face-processing architecture to extract his biometric data."

The complaint claims Grok violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, which regulates the collection of a host of biometric data, including scans of facial geometry. That law includes provisions requiring companies to disclose their policies regarding biometric data -- and obtain state residents' written consent -- before collecting the information.

The state law provides for damages of up to $5,000 per violation.

Padilla is seeking to represent a class of all Illinois Grok users who uploaded photos of their faces to the chatbot and asked it to analyze their faces or create content based on them.

He is asking the court to award monetary damages and issue an injunction that would prohibit Grok from collecting residents' biometric information and to destroy any data already collected, among other requirements.