The data collected by robot vacuums can be particularly invasive. Often, we opt in simply by using the product, as noted in privacy policies with vague language that gives companies broad discretion in how they disseminate and analyze consumer information. The most useful data sets are the most realistic, making data sourced from real environments, like homes, especially valuable. Much of this technology is based on machine learning, a technique that uses large troves of data-including our voices, faces, homes, and other personal information-to train algorithms to recognize patterns. It’s a practice that has only grown more common over the past decade, as data-hungry artificial intelligence has been increasingly integrated into a whole new array of products and services. While the images shared with us did not come from iRobot customers, consumers regularly consent to having our data monitored to varying degrees on devices ranging from iPhones to washing machines. iRobot declined to let MIT Technology Review view the consent agreements and did not make any of its paid collectors or employees available to discuss their understanding of the terms. Please reach out at other words, by iRobot’s estimation, anyone whose photos or video appeared in the streams had agreed to let their Roombas monitor them. According to iRobot, the devices were labeled with a bright green sticker that read “video recording in progress,” and it was up to those paid data collectors to “remove anything they deem sensitive from any space the robot operates in, including children.”ĭid you participate in iRobot's data collection efforts? We'd love to hear from you. They were given to “paid collectors and employees” who signed written agreements acknowledging that they were sending data streams, including video, back to the company for training purposes. All of them came from “special development robots with hardware and software modifications that are not and never were present on iRobot consumer products for purchase,” the company said in a statement. IRobot-the world’s largest vendor of robotic vacuums, which Amazon recently acquired for $1.7 billion in a pending deal-confirmed that these images were captured by its Roombas in 2020.
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