AI-Based Real Estate Platform Sends Illegal Text Messages, Alleges Class Action
David Almeida filed a class action against Localize City, a real estate acquisition platform that supports real estate agents by using AI technology to convert leads into sales, to "enforce the consumer privacy provisions afforded" by the Telephone Consumer Protection…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
Act, said his complaint Thursday (docket 1:24-cv-01948) in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago. Localize sent unsolicited text messages promoting its real estate listings to the Cook County resident and the putative class members using an automatic telephone dialing system, alleges the complaint. Almeida’s phone number has been listed on the national do not call registry since December 2022, so the text messages Localize sent him were in “clear violation” of the TCPA, it said. Localize’s website says the company believes in the “transformative and limitless potential” of AI built for real estate, said the complaint. By leveraging “deep technologies,” says the website, Localize empowers real estate agents, teams and brokers “to amplify their reach beyond human capabilities and create new opportunities.” Almeida alleges receiving “the first of many automated, unsolicited and unconsented text messages” on Feb. 13 from the same phone number belonging to Localize. The text messages Localize sent the plaintiff “consisted of pre-written templates” that it would have sent to "thousands" of other consumers, said the complaint. Upon information and good faith belief, the language in the messages “were automatically generated and inputted into pre-written text templates without any actual human intervention in the drafting or sending of the messages,” it said. Almeida never provided Localize with express written consent authorizing it to transmit text messages to his cellphone number, it said. The text messages caused Almeida and the class members harm, “including liquidated damages, inconvenience, invasion of privacy, aggravation, annoyance, and violation of their statutory privacy rights,” it said.