Patagonia, a U.S. outdoor recreation clothing retailer, was hit by a class action lawsuit alleging California privacy law violations stemming from its usage of services from artificial intelligence-powered customer service provider Talkdesk, according to The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.
Talkdesk has not only conducted real-time routing of customer and business partner communications, but also leveraged such information to train its AI models to bolster existing services and establish new software offerings, the lawsuit claimed. Moreover, interception, recording, and utilization of such data have not been disclosed by Patagonia or Talkdesk to customers. "This information—which includes personal and financial information, as well as verbal and acoustic information—is a form of currency. The value is well understood in the e-commerce industry," noted the lawsuit. Such a class action comes two months after a similar case was filed against the Navy Federal Credit Union for the usage of Verint AI software in gathering and evaluating customer calls without consent.
