In April, Google settled an Illinois lawsuit accusing it of violating the Biometric Information Privacy Act via a Photos face regrouping tool, for $100M
ROCKFORD, Ill. — Illinois residents are eligible to receive part of a $100 million class-action settlement after Google was accused of violating privacy laws in the state. Tweets: @adam_k_levin and @carnage4life Tweets: Adam Levin / @adam_k_levin : If the other 49 states followed suit, this may actually force Google to change their #privacy practices. As it is, it's a slap on the wrist. https://www.usatoday.com/... Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : My mind is still blown that Illinois made apps recognizing or tagging faces illegal so now class action lawyers are going to collect billions from any app with face filters or tagging. https://www.usatoday.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act has become the most reliable litigation venue in US consumer privacy: Facebook set the template with its $650M facial recognition settlement after a judge ruled the original deal too light a punishment, and Snap followed with a $35M settlement over Snapchat filters and lenses. Google's $100M payout over the Photos face regrouping tool extends that line from social networks to photo libraries.
The quoted reactions frame the stakes: Adam Levin argues the settlement only bites if the other 49 states adopt comparable statutes, while Dare Obasanjo points at the plaintiffs' bar now harvesting billions from biometric claims. The coverage also shows this was not a one-off for Google — the same year brought a record $391.5M settlement with 40 state AGs over location tracking.
First-order effects
- Illinois residents become eligible for shares of the $100M fund, while Google absorbs a nine-figure cost tied specifically to a consumer feature — automatic face grouping in Photos — rather than an ad-tech practice.
- Google faces direct pressure on whether face-grouping remains enabled by default for Illinois users, since the suit targeted the feature itself under BIPA's consent requirements.
Second-order effects
- Every company shipping consumer biometric features — Snap's lenses being the adjacent case — now prices BIPA exposure into product decisions, effectively making Illinois a de facto national review gate for face-recognition UX.
- Plaintiffs' firms gain a proven playbook against photo-tagging and filter products, raising the expected litigation cost of any default-on biometric feature across the industry.
Third-order effects
- If Levin's condition holds and more states enact BIPA-style private-right-of-action statutes, biometric features shift from engineering choices to compliance-bounded ones, with class-action settlements functioning as a recurring operating cost rather than an anomaly.
- Google's subsequent run of privacy settlements — the state AGs deal, then the DC and Indiana location suits — suggests the structural pattern: state-level enforcement filling the gap left by absent federal privacy legislation, with per-state statutes compounding into multi-state exposure.
The trend: State biometric and privacy statutes are converting consumer AI features into standing litigation exposure, with class-action settlements becoming a normalized cost of shipping face-related products in the US.