Gujarat Man Takes Google To Court For Blocking His Gmail Account
The Gujarat High Court has issued a notice to Google India for blocking the Gmail account of a user for allegedly violating its policy related to explicit child abuse.
The notice was issued on the plea of one Neel Shukla, a computer engineer who argued that he is unable to use any personal or professional services such as Google Pay, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sheets, etc due to his account being blocked.
Can't use Gmail, other linked services
Shukla further alleged that he was locked out of his other email services such as his old Yahoo account as Gmail was a backup email attached to said account.
He also stated that he was not able to use services like Discord, Reddit, YouTube, Android Play Store, etc. as they were also linked to his Gmail account.
According to Shukla, his Gmail account was blocked without warning in April last year after he uploaded several photos of him to Google Drive.
Childhood photo wrongly flagged by AI
Shukla said that one of the photos he uploaded depicted him being bathed by his grandmother when he was just two years old.
This photo, according to Shulka was wrongly identified as child abuse by Google's artificial intelligence and his account was blocked without warning.
Shukla had approached the Gujarat police and the Centre¡¯s Department of Science and Technology, the nodal agency for such matters in India, but they also failed to act, and he was forced to seek judicial remedy.
Court issues notice to Google?
"It is imperative to note that the initial content scanning mechanism and appeal mechanism are both done via an Artificial Intelligence programme - SAM. Only two appeals are allowed within Respondent Nos. 4's (Google) redressal mechanism, both of which are conducted by Artificial Intelligence and not by a human being," the plea stated.
Shukla moved the high court on March 12 after the company failed to resolve the issue through its grievance redressal mechanism.
A Gujarat HC bench of Justice Vaibhavi D Nanavati on March 15 issued notices to Google, the Central and state governments seeking their responses by March 26.
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