Photobucket Facing Lawsuit Over Plan to Sell 13 Billion User Photos to Third Parties

New to ClassAction.org? Read our Newswire Disclaimer

Online photo storage service Photobucket faces a proposed class action lawsuit over the company’s plan to license more than 13 billion images on its servers to third parties for biometric uses and artificial intelligence (AI) training.

Get the latest open class action lawsuits sent to your inbox. Sign up for ClassAction.org’s free weekly newsletter.

The 47-page lawsuit says that in a bid to rebrand itself as a player in the emerging AI industry, Photobucket has attempted to coerce users into agreeing to a new “biometric policy” that purports to give the company the right to license, trade or otherwise profit from a user’s uploaded content unless they opt out within a 45-day period.

According to the class action suit, the company hopes to monetize customers’ images by licensing them to third parties that can use them to create facial recognition databases or train AI algorithms. However, Photobucket has violated various state privacy and consumer protection laws by failing to obtain users’ informed consent to profit from their photos, the case alleges.

As the suit tells it, beginning in May and June 2024, Photobucket sent customers “fraudulent and coercive” emails encouraging them to log into their accounts or risk losing their stored images. Once a user logs in, the company then presents them with a choice between consenting to the new biometric policy or having their content erased, the case relays.

Per the complaint, Photobucket claims that consumers who did not engage with the emails or log into their accounts have, “by their silence,” “implicitly consented” to its use of their photos for biometric or AI purposes.

“Photobucket’s strongarm tactics, however, are illegal,” the filing charges.

The Photobucket lawsuit argues that customers—many of whom have allowed their accounts to go dormant after Photobucket’s heyday in the early 2010s—entrusted their photos to the company well before AI or facial recognition technology existed and never gave the company permission to use the content for such purposes.

“When it encouraged customers to upload their photos, Photobucket never gave them notice that it might one day appropriate them for biometric data or machine learning,” the filing asserts. “Rather, Photobucket told users that it was a cloud storage service for customers who wished to view their photos online, and it repeatedly promised users to respect their rights to their data and intellectual property and to be a responsible steward of the photographs entrusted to it.”

According to the lawsuit, Photobucket cannot use customers’ uploaded content without their express, informed authorization and that of every other person appearing in the images. Doing so would violate multiple state biometric privacy laws and Photobucket’s prior user agreements, which prohibit the use of consumers’ photos for such purposes, the suit alleges.

“All account holders but the handful of persons who may have affirmatively and informedly agreed to the new biometric policy, retain the protections of their prior contracts with Photobucket, which omit any consent to uses of the photos for machine learning and biometrics,” the case states.

In addition, the complaint asserts that many individuals depicted in users’ images are not Photobucket customers themselves and are not bound by any user agreement in the first place. As such, the company lacks legal authority to use the content in any capacity, the filing contends.

The lawsuit looks to represent anyone who uploaded photographs to Photobucket at any time between January 1, 2003 and May 1, 2024.

The suit also seeks to cover anyone who appears in photographs uploaded to Photobucket at any time but did not themselves create a Photobucket account.

Did you know that some class action settlements require no proof to submit a claim? Check out the latest open class action settlements.