London, May 17 (IANS): Google is facing a class-action lawsuit in the UK for allegedly using confidential medical records belonging to 1.6 million individuals for its artificial intelligence (AI) division called DeepMind.

DeepMind allegedly passed data on patients for a smartphone app called 'Streams' that it received from the Royal Free NHS Trust in London, without the patients' knowledge or consent, reports TechCrunch.

The smartphone app was developed to detect acute kidney injuries. It was subsequently used by the Royal Free NHS Trust on a discount basis.

The deal was subsequently found to be illegal by the UK's Information Commissioner's Office.

Law firm Mishcon de Reya is now representing Andrew Prismall who filed the suit on behalf of approximately 1.6 million individuals whose records were passed to DeepMind.

The law firm said that the Royal Free is not being sued.

"The claim is for Misuse of Private Information by Google and DeepMind. This is under common law. We can also confirm this is a damages claim," the law firm was quoted as saying.

Prismall said that he hopes that "this case can achieve a fair outcome and closure for the many patients whose confidential records were, without the patients' knowledge, obtained and used by these large tech companies."

Google or DeepMind were yet to react to the class-action lawsuit.

There has been a surge in class-action lawsuits targeting tech giants over misuse of data in Europe.