Google has been found to have acquired a bankrupt budget airline's in-house data for a large sum.
According to documents filed on the 17th (local time) with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, Google was selected as the final bidder in the data auction for Spirit Airlines held on the 14th.
Spirit Airlines, a low-cost carrier with 17,000 employees, filed for bankruptcy in May due to debt and high oil prices, and operations have been completely halted.
Google bid the highest at $10 million (about 14.1 billion won), while competitor Merkor, an artificial intelligence (AI) data specialist corporations, offered $7.5 million and became the backup bidder.
The data Google is buying through this auction consists of system data accumulated during Spirit Airlines' internal operations and development, and communications records among employees. It also includes 100 million email records; 500 million internal messenger chat logs such as Microsoft (MS) Teams; internal documents; meeting materials; and 30 million lines of programming code. However, customer information, credit card payment information, and legal secrets are excluded.
Google plans to use this data to enhance AI model performance and more. However, it can access the data only after outsourcing the removal of all personally identifiable information to an external organization.
The court is scheduled to decide on the 19th whether to grant final approval for Spirit Airlines' asset sale.
As major AI corporations have recently begun developing agents that perform tasks without human intervention, demand is growing for work-related data inside corporations. This is to enable AI to learn how staff actually communicate and collaborate when doing real work.