Meta Faces Privacy and Labor Controversy Over AI Training Data

NAIROBI. Facebook's parent company Meta has once again fallen into serious privacy and labor disputes. This controversy surfaced after Meta suddenly canceled its contract with 'Sama', an outsourcing company based in Kenya that trains its Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The root of this controversy is linked to Meta's recently launched Ray-Ban smart glasses. Employees of Sama working in Kenya have made sensational revelations that they were forced to watch extremely private and objectionable videos of users wearing those glasses. According to reports published in two Swedish newspapers, employees had to watch scenes of users going to the toilet, being naked, and engaging in sexual intercourse. The employees were used to 'label' these scenes recorded by the glasses so that the AI could understand them.

One employee shared their experience, saying, 'We see everything from the user's living room to their naked bodies.' In another incident, it was revealed that a user left their glasses in recording mode in their bedroom, due to which scenes of his wife changing clothes were also recorded and sent to Kenya for AI training.

As soon as these facts came to light, Meta broke its contract with Sama, putting the jobs of 1,008 employees at risk. However, Kenya's trade union has accused Meta of canceling the contract in retaliation for employees leaking privacy information. Meta, however, claims that the contract was terminated because Sama did not meet the company's standards.

Meta argues that human review is necessary to improve user experience and make AI more effective, and user consent will be obtained for this. However, data protection regulators in Britain and Kenya have called it 'worrying' and have started investigations.