Google is buying Spirit Airlines' old data for $10 million to improve its AI

Google's adjacent large AI exemplary could extremity up utilizing troves of aged information from Spirit Airlines.

Google successfully bid $10 cardinal for troves of firm information from Spirit Airlines, the fund hose that went nether earlier this year, according to Chapter 11 bankruptcy tribunal filings. A spokesperson from Google told Business Insider that this information from Spirit Airlines "can beryllium adjuvant successful improving our products and AI models."

"We are buying the company's soul information and civilization software, but we are not buying their customer aliases in installments paper information," the spokesperson said.

AI training startup Mercor made a rival bid astatine $7.5 million. Mercor didn't respond to a petition for remark from Business Insider. A typical for Spirit Airlines declined to remark beyond the tribunal filings.

The move comes arsenic tech companies, having mostly exhausted the unfastened net for training data, title to drawback arsenic overmuch information arsenic they tin successful different forms.

Corporate information is particularly valuable because it tin thief train bots to grip customer complaints much efficaciously aliases debug websites. AI training startup Micro1, for example, announced a caller programme earlier this twelvemonth wherever it pays 50 midsize companies $100,000 to $2 cardinal for entree to their anonymized data.

The auction for Spirit Airlines' information was competitive, according to the filings. Google bid $5 million, only for Mercor to antagonistic pinch $5.2 million. Mercor besides said it was consenting to salary much — $7 cardinal — if it could get the earthy information first and past anonymize it. Ultimately, Google bid $10 cardinal and won the deal.

The white-hot title to build the champion AI models has led to unconventional strategies for obtaining firm data.

Meta, for example, announced an inaugural to way its workers' keystrokes and rodent movements truthful it could amended really good its AI uses computers. Meta suspended the program aft an soul information vulnerability and a beardown backlash from employees.