According to reports, Google has launched a new data collection project, hired contractors to collect facial recognition data from children, and offered parents $50 for their children's participation.
404 Media report The project revolves around Google collecting certain data such as children's eyelid shapes and skin color. Parents are asked to photograph their children wearing various props such as hats and sunglasses. TELUS pays parents their $50 for this data collection effort on behalf of Google. The main objective of this project is to build datasets for machine learning, artificial intelligence, and facial recognition technologies.
Alphabet Inc. CEO Sundar Pichai spoke at the Google I/O developer conference held in Mountain View, California, USA on Wednesday, May 10, 2023. Google has introduced a new large-scale language model that will be used to train artificial intelligence tools such as: He said the chatbot, known as PaLM 2, is already integrated into many of the Internet search company's major products.Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
This data collection method is a significant shift from traditional approaches of scraping existing images or analyzing previously collected material found on the internet. Instead, Google involves the public directly in the data collection process and compensates them for their contributions. Google has revealed that this effort is part of its efforts to verify the age of users.
Participants in the project are required to be minors, especially between the ages of 13 and 17. The process involves shooting multiple short videos of less than 40 seconds each, and the entire task is expected to take him 30 to 45 minutes. The project insists that children be filmed on private property rather than in public spaces, and requires parental consent.
TELUS, which also offers facial recognition products, says the purpose of this collection is to understand a wide range of participants. This is intended to ensure that services and products derived from this data are representative of a diverse range of end users. Data collection is aimed at improving authentication methods and thereby providing users with more secure tools.
Google claims that TELUS' involvement is only for the purpose of identifying participants, and that Google receives the recorded videos directly. The tech giant highlighted its commitment to an age-appropriate experience and compliance with laws and regulations, as well as the introduction of strict privacy protections, including the option for participants to delete their data at any time.
Google's latest data collection scheme is particularly problematic given the fact that it was revealed in December that an AI training dataset contained child pornography.
Associated Press report The Stanford Internet Observatory, in collaboration with the Canadian Center for Child Protection and other abuse prevention charities, announced that it has discovered more than 3,200 images of suspected child sexual abuse in the AI database LAION. LAION, an online image and caption index, has helped train leading AI image makers such as Stable Diffusion.
The discovery set off alarm bells in a variety of sectors, including schools and law enforcement. Child porn now allows AI systems to generate explicit and realistic images of fake children and convert real teen social media photos into deepfake nudes. Previously, it was thought that AI tools combined adult pornography with benign photos of children to generate abusive images. However, including explicit child images directly in the training dataset creates a more direct and disturbing reality.
read more Click here for 404 Media.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering free speech and online censorship issues.
