Microsoft and OpenAI were sued on Wednesday by sixteen pseudonymous individuals who claim the companies' AI products based on ChatGPT collected and divulged their personal information without adequate notice or consent.

The complaint [PDF], filed in federal court in San Francisco, California, alleges the two businesses ignored the legal means of obtaining data for their AI models and chose to gather it without paying for it.

"Despite established protocols for the purchase and use of personal information, Defendants took a different approach: theft," the complaint says. "They systematically scraped 300 billion words from the internet, 'books, articles, websites and posts – including personal information obtained without consent.' OpenAI did so in secret, and without registering as a data broker as it was required to do under applicable law."