Rumors have circulated today claiming that robotaxi company Waymo may use data from the interior cameras of vehicles to train AI and to sell targeted ads to passengers. The company has attempted to calm fears by insisting it will not be targeting ads at passengers.
This situation arose when Jane Manchun Wong, a researcher and engineer, was contacted. The draft policy contains language that allows customers to opt out of Waymo “using your personal information (including interior camera data associated with your identity) for training GAI.” Wong’s discovery also suggested that Waymo could use the camera footage from its vehicles to sell personalized ads to riders. The draft policy contains language that allows customers to opt-out of Waymo.”using your personal information (including interior camera data associated with your identity) for training GAI.”Wong’s discovery also suggested Waymo could sell personalized ads to rider’s using the camera footage.
Later that day, the Verge andreceived comments from Julia Ilina, Waymo’s spokesperson. She said “Waymo’s [machine learning] systems are not designed to use this data to identify individual people, and there are no plans to use this data for targeted ads,” . Ilina stated that the version found by Wong contained “placeholder text that doesn’t accurately reflect the feature’s purpose” stating that the feature is still under development. It “will not introduce any changes to Waymo’s Privacy Policy, but rather will offer riders an opportunity to opt out of data collection for ML training purposes.”
I hope Waymo keeps to these statements. As AI companies feed their models with as much data as possible, privacy and security are major concerns. Alphabet owns Waymo and Google is developingGemini, as well other AI projects through its DeepMind division.
