IBM didn’t inform people when it used their Flickr photos for facial recognition training
IBM took nearly a million photos from Flickr, used them to figure out how to train facial recognition training programs, and shared them with outside researchers. But as NBC points out, the people photographed on Flickr didn’t consent to having their photos used to develop facial recognition systems — and might easily not have, considering those systems could eventually be used to surveil and recognize them.
While the photographers may have gotten permission to take pictures of these people, some told NBC that the people who were photographed didn’t know their images had been annotated with facial recognition notes and could be used to train algorithms.
“None of the people I photographed had any idea their images were being used in...