By By David Shepardson
Publication Date: 2026-10-08 22:02:00
By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON, Oct 8 (Reuters) – More than 120 US lawmakers raised concerns on Thursday about a deal for Alphabet’s Google unit to acquire defunct carrier Spirit Airlines’ internal data for $10 million to train artificial intelligence systems.
As part of Spirit’s closure and asset liquidation, Google won an auction in August for data from spreadsheets and calendars as well as for marketing, productivity and operations. Spirit Airlines halted operations in May.
A privacy ombudsman on Monday recommended a US bankruptcy judge approve the deal at an October 14 hearing after excluding passenger personal information from 97 million Spirit customers.
The lawmakers led by Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Steven Horsford said the sale would include 100 million emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams messages and other employee records.
The lawmakers asked the company to “exclude employee…
