In 2020, a picture of a girl sitting on a toilet was published in one of the Venezuelan internet forums. It turned out that the picture was taken by the iRobot Roomba J7 robot vacuum cleaner, writes the MIT Technology Review magazine.
It is said that the robot vacuum cleaner sent the photo of the girl to the Scale AI startup, which marks objects in the photos to train the artificial intelligence. It is believed that the image was posted on the forum by an employee of one of the companies that had access to the image.
MIT Technology Review also found several more images and videos of intimate and domestic scenes in which people’s faces can be seen. iRobot confirmed that the pictures were taken with a vacuum cleaner in 2020.
The company separately noted that these devices are used by testers for AI training purposes, and such vacuum cleaners are not available to the general public. The manufacturer of the Roomba J7 also said that it has launched an investigation into the incident.
