Google Gemini face scans violate IL biometrics law: Class action

By Jonathan Bilyk | Legal Newsline
The Center Square

Google has been hit, again, by a class action lawsuit under Illinois’ stringent biometrics privacy law, this time accusing the tech giant of allegedly illegally scanning the faces of people pictured in photos uploaded to be edited through the company’s Gemini A.I.

Attorneys with the firm of McGuire Law P.C., of Chicago, filed suit in Cook County Circuit Court against Google, accusing the company of allegedly violating the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA.)

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of named plaintiff John Adams, identified only as a resident of Illinois.

However, the lawsuit seeks to expand the action to include potentially “thousands” of other Illinois residents who used the Gemini generative conversational artificial intelligence platform since it was publicly rolled out three years ago.

The lawsuit takes aim at Gemini’s ability to edit and manipulate photos uploaded to the platform. The complaint notes that Gemini, like other so-called chatbot A.I. programs, allows users to upload photos and then use spoken “natural-language prompts” to modify the images.

For instance, according to the complaint, Adams allegedly uploaded a close-up photo of his face to the Gemini platform in late 2025, and then allegedly asked Gemini to complete a number of edits and modifications to the image.

These allegedly included the spoken prompts: “Can you make a professional profile picture that I can use in places like LinkedIn?”; “Make me wear a suit and also tidy up my hair a bit at the very minimum”; “I am not balding”; and “Also should wear a suit and make hair bit more realistic. Maybe tone my dark under eyes too.”

According to the complaint, the Gemini program then allegedly used those prompts “to generate numerous edited photos” of Adams.

While Adams willingly uploaded the photo and asked Gemini to modify it according to his instructions, the complaint asserts Google must still pay, because the scans allegedly violated the BIPA law. Specifically, the complaint asserts Google and its Gemini program did not secure Adams’ written consent before allegedly improperly scanning his face in the uploaded photo to edit and modify the image.

Further, the complaint accuses Google of allegedly failing to properly notify Adams and other users about how the company would collect, store, use and ultimately destroy the alleged scans of Adams’ and other users’ faces., which they say is also a violation of BIPA.

The lawsuit is just another among a consistently growing number of thousands of class action lawsuits lodged against businesses in Illinois courts and elsewhere under the BIPA law.

While the bulk of those lawsuits have targeted Illinois employers, a large number of BIPA suits have also assailed tech giants, including Google, Facebook- and Instagram-parent company Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and others.

Google has already been targeted in multiple lawsuits in the past decade.

The lawsuits have been particularly triggered by the potential under the BIPA law to rake in paydays in some instances worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

To this point, no lawsuits filed under the BIPA law have established any real harm to plaintiffs or class members from the alleged improper scans of fingerprints, faces or other biometric identifiers.

However, thanks to favorable rulings by the Illinois Supreme Court, the plaintiffs have never been required to do so, allowing the big-money lawsuits to advance in the courts and pressure the business defendants into settlements.

From those settlements, the biggest winners have typically been the trial lawyers who have brought the lawsuits. They have collectively raked in hundreds of millions of dollars in fees, with those totals continuing to grow.

The lawsuits find their power to command such settlements in the BIPA law’s so-called statutory damages. Under the law, as interpreted by the Illinois Supreme Court, plaintiffs are allowed to claim damages of $1,000 to $5,000 per violation.

When multiplied across thousands of users, those total potential payouts can quickly rise into the tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars.

So, companies that cannot present a quick and ironclad defense against the BIPA claims have typically chosen to settle, rather than take their chances before a jury.

Google, for instance, has already inked BIPA settlements worth $100 million and $8.75 million, respectively, to settle just two BIPA class actions.

In the new lawsuit, Adams and his lawyers from the McGuire firm are similarly seeking the statutory damages of $1,000 or $5,000 per violation permitted under the BIPA law.

The plaintiffs in the new Gemini lawsuit are represented by attorneys Andrew T. Heldut, David L. Gerbie and Donald Cuba, of the McGuire firm.

Attorneys from the McGuire firm have ranked among the most prolific of BIPA lawsuit filers since BIPA class actions first began landing in Cook County and other courts in Illinois and elsewhere in the country.

Google has not yet filed a response to the lawsuit in court.