Tech giant has assured former airline employees and customers that the data will be scrubbed of identifying information
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Spirit Airlines shuttered in May and has been selling off its assets ever since. Most of what it’s selling are physical assets, like aircraft and equipment, but it also had years of worker and customer data stored in its servers.
On Monday, Spirit agreed to sell Google that data for $10 million. The data — which will be used to train Google’s AI products — includes emails, internal communications, transaction logs, spreadsheets, human resource files, and customer information.
The information has been scrubbed of identifying information, according to a court filing.
“We acquired part of an enterprise dataset from Spirit Airlines, which can be helpful in improving our products and AI models,” a Google spokesperson confirmed to CNN.
The data obtained by Google reportedly includes 100 million company emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams conversations, approximately 30 million lines of code, various insights into software production, algorithms, and modeling, and information detailing aircraft operations, company revenue, and worker productivity, according to Gizmodo.
Despite assurances that there won't be any identifying information included with the data, some airline professionals remain critical of the purchase.
Sara Nelson, the international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, said her organization plans to try to stop Google from obtaining the data.
“This is outrageous!" she told Forbes. "We are filing a court objection to Google’s attempt to buy data that has no business being sold."
Spirit Airlines isn't the only company selling off its data for use in AI training. As more and more data is sucked up for use in AI training, companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google have to expand where they source their training data.
Some researchers have suggested using "synthetic" data — that is, simulated information — to continue training AI models.
Purchasing information directly from companies allows AI developers to secure additional data for their training needs.
Mercor — which is believed to have tried to buy the Spirit data itself but was beaten to it by Google — reportedly offered people money earlier this year for any materials they still possessed from their previous jobs, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The Independent has contacted Google for comment.
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