Artificial intelligence models have reportedly been found to be training on a dataset that includes photos of minors from Australia without their consent.
Many photographs were scraped from difficult-to-find areas that individuals may have assumed were private, such as private blogs and school internet pages, or from locations that could not be easily searched using a browser.
(Photo : OLIVIER MORIN/AFP via Getty Images)
The Human Rights Watch researcher who discovered the photographs blamed the German non-profit LAION for creating the LAION-5B dataset, which has 5.85 billion image connections.
In its defense, LAION informed sources that its dataset is just a compilation of links accessible through the public internet.
A spokeswoman stated that the most efficient approach to promoting safety is eliminating private children's data from the public web. In effect, this transfers accountability to their guardians and parents.
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Regulators on AI Training
This implies that if a kid's data is available on the internet, deliberately or otherwise, it becomes fair for web crawlers, companies like LAION, and AI labs to access and train on it.
Privacy regulators do not believe so. According to Australia's regulator, most countries still have privacy regulations for publicly available personal information.
In reality, sources indicate that the entire AI supply chain is responsible for infractions like these, but parents need less guilt and more assistance than they are receiving.
Meta AI Training Banned
AI training data sources remain a topic of contention and worry, as Meta was recently barred from training on data originating in Brazil by the country's national data protection body.
This decision was made in response to concerns about potential harm to individuals' basic rights, as stated by the regulatory agency. Brazil, where Facebook alone has over 102 million active users out of an overall population of about 203 million, is a significant market for Meta.
Despite Meta's claim that its modified privacy policy conforms with Brazil's privacy rules, the business expressed unhappiness with the verdict, emphasizing its possible influence on Brazilian innovation and artificial intelligence research.
Meta's privacy policy update has encountered opposition in Brazil and Europe, where intentions to include public postings in AI training were recently suspended.
Sources said similar tactics are already in place in the United States, where federal privacy regulations are less rigorous. Meta's previous disclosures suggested that it intends to leverage publicly available information about its goods and services, such as data from public postings and photographs with captions, to improve AI capabilities.
However, there have been questions expressed regarding the accessibility and clarity of the opt-out process for consumers who want to avoid having their data used in this way. The regulatory decision underscores larger worries about using personal data in artificial intelligence research.
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