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Roomba hoover takes picture of woman on toilet which ends up being shared on Facebook

Home> Technology

Updated 14:14 22 Dec 2022 GMTPublished 21:31 21 Dec 2022 GMT

Roomba hoover takes picture of woman on toilet which ends up being shared on Facebook

There are concerns over the kinds of pictures our devices are taking of us and where they end up

Joe Harker

Joe Harker

Featured Image Credit: iRobot’s Roomba J7

Topics: Technology, News

Joe Harker
Joe Harker

Joe graduated from the University of Salford with a degree in Journalism and worked for Reach before joining the LADbible Group. When not writing he enjoys the nerdier things in life like painting wargaming miniatures and chatting with other nerds on the internet. He's also spent a few years coaching fencing. Contact him via [email protected]

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@MrJoeHarker

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Robot vacuum cleaner maker iRobot has confirmed that personal images of a woman which ended up being shared on Facebook were taken by one of their Roombas.

Images of the woman, who was on the toilet at the time the photos were taken of her by a Roomba, came from one of their test units, not a purchased device, the company have said.

MIT Technology Review says iRobot were using some Roombas as test units to collect information for 'paid data collectors and employees' to help the company work on their machine-learning.

The pictures were taken by a Roomba J7 in 2020 and sent to Scale AI, a company which labels sounds and images in data to train artificial intelligence to better recognise what it is looking at.

They include pictures of household interiors, some of them with people and their pets in the frame of the pictures taken by the Roomba.

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However, they say that one of the images which they obtained was of a woman on the toilet and the picture had then been posted to closed social media groups by employees meant to look through the data.

Footage of the woman was taken by a test model of a Roomba.
Ben Molyneux / Alamy Stock Photo

Incidents such as these have caused concern over how personal data can be passed along without the knowledge of the subject, to the point that it can result in images of a person being shared on social media.

In this instance a woman was filmed in a private moment during testing of a Roomba and images from that footage were ultimately shared in closed groups on social media.

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iRobot says their retail models are designed to immediately delete any image which contains a picture of a person, and that other images are stored in the cloud for 30 days before being deleted.

They say these pictures can only be accessed by users via an app, and that iRobot cannot access images taken by Roombas sold to the public.

iRobot told us that the Roombas involved in this situation were all research and development devices, not ones which the general public could buy off the shelves.

iRobot say this was done during a test to gather data to train AIs, and that they have terminated their partnership with the company responsible for the leak.
Tydd Pictorial / Alamy Stock Photo

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These robots contain modifications which allow them to collect data, these modifications are not included on Roombas available for purchase by the public, they were also labelled with green stickers saying 'video recording in progress'.

iRobot CEO Colin Angle released a statement on the matter saying their products ensured 'best in class product security and consumer privacy'.

He said: "The iRobot-related images in question were from development robots used by paid data collectors and employees in 2020 for machine learning purposes.

"The images are not from production robots in consumers' homes."

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"iRobot is terminating its relationship with the service provider who leaked the images, is actively investigating the matter, and taking measures to help prevent a similar leak by any service provider in the future."

UNILAD has contacted Scale AI for comment.

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