Earlier this year, Anker, a Chinese company that manufactures Euphoric security cameras, provided the money to users in exchange for packaging and video of theft of the car.
The popular internet-connected security camera maker said paying customers $2 per video to train their AI systems will help them better detect thieves stealing cars and packages.
“We are looking for videos of both real and stage events to ensure sufficient data.
“You can also create events by pretending to be a burglar and donate those events,” the website reads. “You can complete this quickly. Maybe it’s efficient and easy as you can capture one act with two outdoor cameras at the same time. You can also stage theft of a car door and earn $80.”
Eufy also writes that “data collected from these stepwise events will only be used for training the AL algorithm, not for other purposes.”
This initiative shows that companies are willing to pay to retrieve data from users they think will help train AI models. This allows some users to gain value from their data, but it involves security and privacy risks.
A good case: Last week, TechCrunch discovered that Neon, a virus-calling app that provides money to users who are willing to share calls recordings and transcripts, has a security flaw that allows users to access other users’ data. After being warned that security had expired, Neon went offline.
Hundreds of thousands of videos have been “donated” to train AI
According to comments posted by users, $2 for each video of the stolen video offers $2 for the stolen video.
The company’s goal was to collect 20,000 videos each, stolen packages and “pull car doors.” Eufy users can join by filling out Google forms and uploading videos and PayPal accounts for payment.
Eufy did not respond to our questions, including requests for TechCrunch’s comments, the number of users who participated in the campaign, how much they paid, how many videos the company collected, and whether they deleted videos collected after training their AI systems.
Eufy has since had a similar campaign aimed at encouraging customers to send videos to train AI.
At the time of publication, through another in-app campaign in which Eufy invokes a video donation program to improve its AI system, Eufy will provide users with users ranging from “Apprentice Medal” to gifts such as cameras and gift cards that look like badges next to the user’s name in the app.
Eufy is just looking for a human-involved video for this campaign.
The Eufy app also displays “Honor Wall,” which ranks users who donate most video events. According to the app, the ranking leader has donated 201,531 videos.
On the Donation Program’s app page, Yuffie makes it clear that “Doned videos will only be used for AL training and improvements. Yuffie will not provide videos to third parties.”
Eufy also asks users to donate videos recorded on the company’s baby monitor. The support page detailing the steps to share videos does not mention the money rewards for these videos.
Eufy did not respond when asked about this particular initiative.
There is reason to question Eufy’s commitment to protecting user privacy. In 2023, Verge revealed that the user’s camera streams that the company advertised as end-to-end encryption were not encrypted when accessed through a web portal.
After communicating with technology news sites, Anker admitted that he misunderstood the user and committed to solving the issue.
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