The privacy risks posed by the artificial intelligence industry are slowly coming into view. Alphabet’s robotaxi business, Waymo, says it may use videos of passengers captured by in-vehicle cameras to sell ads and train its AI models.
TechCrunch reports that the unreleased policy was originally spotted by reliable software researcher Jane Manchun Wong, who posted about it on X on Saturday. A screenshot provided by Wong shows the terms of use that the robotaxi company plans to ask riders to comply with. An opt-out option is provided to comply with California’s privacy law. It’s not entirely clear how Wong was able to access the new policy that hasn’t been shared publicly but Wong is known for digging through companies’ software and finding unreleased updates.
The screenshot of the policy states: “Waymo may share data to improve and analyze its functionality and to tailor products, services, ads, and offers to your interests. You can opt out of sharing your information with third parties, unless it’s necessary to the functioning of the service.”
Wong has noted that the new policy will have an opt-out option for California riders, to comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act—one of the only comprehensive state privacy laws in the country. The CCPA allows residents to access and delete data that has been collected about them.
“Opt out of Waymo, or its affiliates, using your personal information (including interior camera data associated with your identity) for training GAI,” the screenshot.
When reached for comment by Gizmodo, Waymo disputed some of the assertions in the policy draft that had leaked but didn’t dispute that the leak was real. “This unreleased app page contains placeholder text that doesn’t accurately reflect the feature’s purpose,” the company said. “The feature, which is still under development, will not introduce any changes to Waymo’s Privacy Policy, but rather will offer riders an opportunity to opt out of data collection for ML training purposes. The data is used among other things, to train models for safety, to make sure cars are clean, find lost items, provide help in case of emergency, check that in-car rules are being followed and improve products and services. Waymo’s ML systems are not designed to use this data to identify individual people, and there are no plans to use this data for targeted ads.”
Waymo has become one of the most successful robotaxi companies on the market. With the swift implosion of its core competitor Cruise (which is owned by GM), Waymo has become the dominant player in California’s self-driving car industry. Waymo, which is currently operational in a handful of cities across the country, recently partnered with Uber, signaling an expansion of services. Other companies, including Elon Musk’s Tesla, have also gestured at future plans to launch robotaxi services—although none have enjoyed Waymo’s level of success yet.
