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A Roomba recorded a woman on the toilet. How did screenshots end up on Facebook?
MIT Technology Review ^ | 12/19/2022 | Eileen Guo

Posted on 12/24/2022 11:32:17 AM PST by Right Wing Vegan

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 angles—including some you really wouldn’t 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 iRobot’s 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 cloud—though 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.

The other shots show rooms from homes around the world, some occupied by humans, one by a dog. Furniture, décor, and objects located high on the walls and ceilings are outlined by rectangular boxes and accompanied by labels like “tv,” “plant_or_flower,” and “ceiling_light.”

(Excerpt) Read more at technologyreview.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: gigworkers; irobot; roomba; roombaj7; venezuela
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1 posted on 12/24/2022 11:32:17 AM PST by Right Wing Vegan
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To: Right Wing Vegan

Why would anyone want a vacuum that takes pictures?


2 posted on 12/24/2022 11:33:00 AM PST by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: dfwgator

Did they KNOW that it took pictures?


3 posted on 12/24/2022 11:33:46 AM PST by BipolarBob (The party never stops until someone calls the cops.)
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To: Right Wing Vegan
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. 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. 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. 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.”
4 posted on 12/24/2022 11:36:11 AM PST by Pollard ( >>> The Great Reset is already underway! <<<)
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To: dfwgator

Sicko Obama and Holder supporters.


5 posted on 12/24/2022 11:38:27 AM PST by FlingWingFlyer (Hey Amerika! The whole world is watching and laughing their asses off. )
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To: Pollard
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.
6 posted on 12/24/2022 11:38:35 AM PST by Right Wing Vegan (Pot legalization licenses every degenerate pothead piece of trash to force drug neighbors.)
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To: dfwgator
The very same people who fill their homes with Alexas and Ring doorbells. Not only has it been documented that law enforcement and government agencies grab information from these devices, but a whole lot of people upload pics and videos from these devices to social media. Why wouldn't they want their vacuum cleaner to take pictures and video? And how many people have died trying to get that perfect selfie?


7 posted on 12/24/2022 11:40:25 AM PST by Obadiah (Died suddenly: Obediently following the science to the grave.)
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To: Right Wing Vegan

Just wait until flying drones are small enough, cheap enough, with a camera good enough. Perverts will be following targets everywhere - to work, to school, to gyms, to the beach, to their homes, and their targets won’t be aware.


8 posted on 12/24/2022 11:43:35 AM PST by Eccl 10:2 (Prov 3:5 --- "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding")
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To: Right Wing Vegan

and who linked the roomba to fb...


9 posted on 12/24/2022 11:52:20 AM PST by Chode (there is no fall back position, there's no rally point, there is no LZ... we're on our own. #FJB)
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To: Right Wing Vegan

The new lidar vacuums will be able to tell if you need to lose weight.


10 posted on 12/24/2022 11:58:45 AM PST by moovova ("The NEXT election is the most important election of our lifetimes!“ LOL...)
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To: Pollard

So they were flashing then....


11 posted on 12/24/2022 12:03:01 PM PST by dila813
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To: Eccl 10:2

Perverts aren’t the biggest worry.

Big Brother is the biggest worry.


12 posted on 12/24/2022 12:15:35 PM PST by Secret Agent Man (Gone Galt; not averse to Going Bronson.)
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To: Eccl 10:2

Smart tvs are taking videos of people at will.


13 posted on 12/24/2022 12:23:29 PM PST by odawg
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To: FlingWingFlyer

We just got a irobot roomba j7. It’s far and away the best of the three roombas we’ve had.


14 posted on 12/24/2022 12:23:36 PM PST by DeplorablePaul ("..)
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To: odawg

“In America Television Watches You”


15 posted on 12/24/2022 12:24:21 PM PST by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: Secret Agent Man
Perverts aren’t the biggest worry.

Big Brother is the biggest worry.

You repeated yourself. Big Brother is made up of perverts.

16 posted on 12/24/2022 12:28:30 PM PST by BlackbirdSST (Trump WON!!! He will win 2024!)
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To: odawg

“Smart tvs are taking videos of people at will.”

Most cannot.


17 posted on 12/24/2022 12:29:55 PM PST by TexasGator (!!!)
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To: Obadiah

“Not only has it been documented that law enforcement and government agencies grab information from these devices,”

How do they grab the info?


18 posted on 12/24/2022 12:31:49 PM PST by TexasGator (!!!)
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To: Obadiah

“Citizen? We notice that you have no digital assistants active in your home or car, nor do you carry a cell phone. Please correct these situations or some social workers will be dispatched to correct them for you.”


19 posted on 12/24/2022 12:44:40 PM PST by Rurudyne (Standup Philosopher)
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To: dfwgator

I bet it was the AI that put them on the web.

Why do humans persist in perfecting a technology that wants to kill you?


20 posted on 12/24/2022 1:26:41 PM PST by Delta 21 (MAGA Republican is my pronoun.)
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