NOYB files 5 GDPR complaints against US-based Scale AI

Digital rights advocacy group NOYB, along with Intérêt à Agir, DIPLab and Reversing.Works has filed five complaints in France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Austria against US-based Scale AI over invasive workplace surveillance practices and violations of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Scale AI operates without a main establishment in the EU, resulting in 5 separate complaints lodged in the countries where the workers are based.

Scale AI operates Outlier, a data annotation platform deploying over 900,000 workers to train artificial intelligence (AI) models for major technology companies and the US government. Technical analysis revealed that Outlier embeds third-party trackers, including those from TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, Sprig, and Datadog, onto workers' devices without lawful consent. These trackers transmit personal information every few seconds to external parties, exposing IP addresses, contact details, unique device identifiers, and site activity for commercial profiling and targeted advertising.

In addition, the company requires workers to undergo recurring biometric checks administered by verification contractor Persona, including live facial video recordings and uploading their ID under the guise of fraud prevention and skill validation. Persona subsequently reserves the right to collect geolocation and device data along with consumer credit records.

NOYB claims that Scale AI lacks a valid legal basis to place trackers on workers' devices or process biometric data, and violates the data minimisation principle. The company also failed to respond to the complainants' subject access requests (SARs).

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