More Than 120 Lawmakers Ask Google to Keep Employee Data Out of Spirit Airlines AI Deal

More than 120 U.S. lawmakers raised concerns on Thursday about Google’s plan to acquire internal data from the defunct Spirit Airlines for $10 million to train artificial intelligence systems, according to Reuters.

The group, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Steven Horsford, said the sale would include 100 million emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams messages and other employee records, according to Reuters. They asked Google to exclude employee information from the transaction to the greatest extent possible.

A bankruptcy sale with privacy conditions

Spirit shut down in May, and Google submitted the winning $10 million bid for the carrier’s data, saying it could help improve its products and AI models, according to reporting summarized by The Cool Down. The sale still needs court approval.

A court-appointed consumer privacy ombudsman backed approval of the deal in a filing, saying the parties had taken steps to protect personal data, according to The Cool Down. The scope was narrowed to carve out passenger databases, and a third-party service was used to strip identifying details from data that could still contain personal information, including company emails, The Cool Down reported. The filing covered data shared by about 97 million consumers who booked flights with Spirit.

Unions have also objected

Labor groups representing former Spirit flight attendants and pilots previously objected to the sale, warning it could expose workers and affect aviation safety, according to The Cool Down. The union representing American Airlines pilots, which includes about 700 former Spirit employees, also joined the opposition, according to reporting summarized in search results from The New York Ledger.

Google has said the sale covers Spirit’s internal data and custom software but not customer or credit card information, and that identifying information would be scrubbed, according to The New York Ledger’s summary. Spirit declined to comment in that reporting, and Google did not respond to a request for comment there.

Reporting based on coverage by Reuters and The Cool Down.