Amazon employee lawsuit overview:
- Who: Vivian Ghaderi filed a lawsuit against Amazon.com Services and Amazon managing agents Andrey Styskin and Mahesh Krishnakumar.
- Why: Amazon discriminated against Ghaderi after she took leave for a pregnancy as it pushed to catch up with others’ artificial intelligence technology, the Amazon AI lawsuit claims.
- Where: The Amazon lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
An Amazon artificial intelligence researcher filed a lawsuit against Amazon.com Services and two managing agents saying they discriminated against her based on her pregnancy leave.
Vivian Ghaderi worked for Amazon from May 2018 to December 2021 and again from March 2022 to November 2023 as the company poured up to $4 billion into its efforts to catch up with ChatGPT and other AI technologies from competing tech companies, the lawsuit alleges.
Around the same time Ghaderi took pregnancy leave, she says OpenAI launched its GPT-4 model. She also claims Amazon changed her position and asked her to violate copyright laws to push Amazon’s AI efforts forward, according to the lawsuit.
The New York Times later filed a lawsuit against OpenAI for violating the company’s copyright, a lawsuit OpenAI asked a federal judge to dismiss.
Ex-employee placed on performance plan after pregnancy leave, then fired
Ghaderi claims Amazon discriminated against her for complaining about the copyright issues. After her pregnancy leave from May 15, 2023, to Aug. 2, 2023, Ghaderi says in the lawsuit that Amazon placed on a covert performance improvement plan.
Amazon then placed Ghaderi on a formal performance improvement plan that required her to meet impossible standards within a short period of time, the lawsuit alleges.
The company fired Ghaderi Nov. 17, 2023, and at least one other member of her prior team who had taken leave was also fired, according to the lawsuit
In February, the Federal Communications Commission declared AI robocalls are “artificial” calls according to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, making them illegal and providing a tool for state attorneys general to protect the public from scammers.
Have you been fired for speaking up at work? Let us know in the comments.
The plaintiff is represented by Julian Burns King, Robert J. King and Andrea Obando of King & Siegel LLP.
The Amazon employee lawsuit is Ghaderi v. Amazon.com Services LLC, et al., Case No. 24STCV09529, in the Superior Court of California for Los Angeles County.
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