IBM has bought a million Flickr images for facial recognition without the knowledge of its owners

Face recognition techniques and age expectations using artificial intelligence have become one of the most controversial issues between technology companies and protection researchers because these technologies require a lot of user data and evolutionary images, which sometimes puts their protection in jeopardy.

At the same time, companies interested in technology and user protection are asking users to use their images for experimental purposes, but IBM, a world leader in technology research, has not bought a million images of Flickr photo-sharing site before using them in his research.

The problem lies in IBM's work on people not knowing that their images are experimenting with businesses: even if the photographer knew it, millions of people in the photos had nothing to do with the photographers even though they had permission to take the picture. For the NBC website.

For its part, IBM commented on The Verge stating that it takes people's privacy seriously and that only its authoritative research groups and institutions can access its list of research data and n & # 39; uses no image not available to the public.

Google and Facebook are using similar tools to entice users to upload and compare their photos. The challenge launched 10 years ago and which has recently expanded has prepared millions of images ready to be used by companies like Facebook as facial recognition techniques. .