IN THE FALL OF 2020, GIG WORKERS IN VENEZUELA POSTED A SERIES OF images to online forums where they gathered to talk shop. The photos were mundane, if sometimes intimate, household scenes captured from low anglesβincluding some you really wouldnβt want shared on the Internet.
In one particularly revealing shot, a young woman in a lavender T-shirt sits on the toilet, her shorts pulled down to mid-thigh.
The images were not taken by a person, but by development versions of iRobotβs Roomba J7 series robot vacuum. They were then sent to Scale AI, a startup that contracts workers around the world to label audio, photo, and video data used to train artificial intelligence.
They were the sorts of scenes that internet-connected devices regularly capture and send back to the cloudβthough usually with stricter storage and access controls. Yet earlier this year, MIT Technology Review obtained 15 screenshots of these private photos, which had been posted to closed social media groups.
The photos vary in type and in sensitivity. The most intimate image we saw was the series of video stills featuring the young woman on the toilet, her face blocked in the lead image but unobscured in the grainy scroll of shots below. In another image, a boy who appears to be eight or nine years old, and whose face is clearly visible, is sprawled on his stomach across a hallway floor. A triangular flop of hair spills across his forehead as he stares, with apparent amusement, at the object recording him from just below eye level.
iRobotβthe worldβs largest vendor of robotic vacuums, which Amazon recently acquired for $1.7 billion in a pending dealβconfirmed that these images were captured by its Roombas in 2020.
Ultimately, though, this set of images represents something bigger than any one individual companyβs actions. They speak to the widespread, and growing, practice of sharing potentially sensitive data to train algorithms, as well as the surprising, globe-spanning journey that a single image can takeβin this case, from homes in North America, Europe, and Asia to the servers of Massachusetts-based iRobot, from there to San Franciscoβbased Scale AI, and finally to Scaleβs contracted data workers around the world (including, in this instance, Venezuelan gig workers who posted the images to private groups on Facebook, Discord, and elsewhere).
Together, the images reveal a whole data supply chainβand new points where personal information could leak outβthat few consumers are even aware of.
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