The CEO of Roomba makers iRobot, Colin Angle, has emphasized that the company is “terminating its relationship with the service provider who leaked the images.”
A young woman was filmed while using the bathroom by a filthy robot vacuum cleaner, and the pictures eventually emerged on Facebook.
This month, information about the frightening data leak from iRobot’s new Roomba J7 series robot vacuum first surfaced.
In order to train artificial intelligence systems, audio, photo, and video data from a test version of the household device’s camera was captured and sent to Scale AI, a company that recruits people from all around the world to tag the data.
According to MIT Technology Review, 15 of those pictures allegedly made their way from there onto private message boards frequented by Venezuelan IT specialists.
The autonomous hoover cleaner’s creator, iRobot, acknowledged that their technology has already taken images in 2020.
They made a point of stating that the pictures were taken by “special development robots with hardware and software modifications that are not and never have been present on iRobot consumer products for purchase.”
They claimed that the machines had been distributed to “paid collectors and employees” who had signed official contracts authorising the business to use any data acquired by the Roombas, including video, for training reasons.
According to the business, the 15 photos that ended up on Facebook were among the two million images shared with Scale AI.
The unique test devices had been marked with labels that made it apparent video shooting was taking place, and the test subjects were advised to “remove anything they deem sensitive from any location the robot operates in, including children,” the company stated.
On the other hand, the company declined to make any of the product testers available for an interview or to give copies of the inked contracts when asked.
Colin Angle, CEO of iRobot, has said that the company is “terminating its relationship with the service provider who leaked the images, is actively investigating the matter, and [is] taking measures to help prevent a similar leak by any service provider in the future”.
Dennis Giese, a data security expert from Boston’s Northeastern University, specializes in protecting home appliances like Amazon’s Alexa personal assistant. He claims that robotic vacuums like the Roomba are especially dangerous since “you have no way to control that they can drive around in your home.”
