Ill. Consumer Sues Fast Food Chain, Voice AI Assistant Provider in Privacy Class Action

Fast food chain Wingstop and voice AI technology platform ConverseNow capture biometric identifiers, including unique voiceprints of customers, without informing them in writing or obtaining their written consent, as required by Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), alleged a class action Wednesday (docket 1:24-cv-02302) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Illinois in Chicago.

Myankhai Batchuluun of Arlington Heights, Illinois, called a Wingstop location in nearby Prospect Heights from his cellphone in February 2023 to place an order for food delivery, said the complaint. On the call, Batchuluun interacted with a voice AI assistant that took his order and collected personal information from him, including his name and phone number, it said. Upon information and belief, the voice AI technology used for taking the order “collected, captured, used, and/or stored his unique voiceprint, biometric identifiers, and/or biometric information” but didn’t inform him it was doing so, it said. Nor did Batchuluun provide a written release authorizing the collection or storage of the biometric identifiers, it said.

ConverseNow announced in March 2023 an evaluation agreement and a pilot program with Wingstop under which ConverseNow’s voice-AI powered virtual assistants would handle phone orders in select Wingstop locations nationwide, said the complaint. ConverseNow CEO Vinay Shukla said then that AI had been “embraced" by Wingstop’s guests and staff “while driving results in sales and average tickets.” At least 60 Wingstop locations in Illinois are using the AI tech, the complaint said.

In ConverseAI’s platform, AI processes “millions of conversations a month” to learn “at an exponential rate,” which the company compares to a “top team member absorbing the lessons learned by every other team member and manager” in all of a brand’s stores. Voice ConverseNow’s AI platform uses memories of past conversations to recommend relevant order suggestions and “upsells based on trends and guest order histories,” it said.

Virtual assistants are “dynamic conversationalists that recognize context clues, read between the lines and refine their algorithms with each order” so they can “learn to recommend relevant order suggestions and upsells based on prior guest orders,” the complaint said. One of voice AI’s advantages over other technologies is its use of “advanced analytics” to give insights into guest behavior “once limited to direct interactions with an individual or through a guest feedback survey,” the suit said.

The complaint cited ConverseNow’s patent 11,348,160, “Determining Order Preferences and Item Suggestions,” which uses contextual clues to determine a customer identity that can be linked to past orders. Based on the determined customer identity, the system may provide recommendations for additional order items or alterations “before personally identifying information (PII) has been collected from the customer,” said the patent. Customer responses and past orders “may be used to continually update the machine learning models and improve the quality of the customer experience,” it said.

Other patents describe data generated by orders, “including the customer’s utterances,” and systems and techniques that “determine a type of customer based on the words the customer uses, the speed of the delivery of the words, the inflection and pitch of the words, one or more emotions conveyed by the words, other information, or any combination thereof.” Another patent, from January, references “archived” conversation data between an employee and customer that’s used to train an AI engine.

Upon information and belief, the defendants “have not informed individuals in writing that their biometric identifiers or biometric information is being collected, captured, or otherwise obtained, nor have they informed customers of the purpose or length of time for which such information is being collected, stored, or used,” the complaint said.

The complaint seeks an order requiring the defendants to comply with the BIPA. It also seeks statutory damages for each intentional BIPA violation and $1,000 for each negligent violation, plus pre- and post-judgment interest and attorneys’ fees and court costs. The defendants didn't comment Thursday.