Waymo responds to reports of using vehicle interior cameras for targeted ads

A hot potato: There were worrying reports yesterday that Waymo is considering using footage from its vehicles' interior cameras to train AI models and sell ads to riders. Now, the robotaxi company has responded, announcing that it has "no plans" to use the data for targeted ads.

Researcher Jane Manchun Wong wrote in an X post that, according to an unreleased version of its privacy policy, Waymo is working on generative AI training using interior camera data associated with a rider's identity.

The policy page also states that Waymo may share rider data to tailor products, services, ads, and offers to customer interests. Targeted ads, basically.

One of the page toggles is to opt out of Waymo, or its affiliates, using your personal information, including interior camera data associated with your identity, for training generative AI.

The page offers opt-outs for this practice and data sharing to comply with California's privacy law, CCPA, which allows residents to access and delete any of their data that may have been collected.

Unsurprisingly, the idea that Waymo could be using cameras inside vehicles to train AI and sell targeted ads to riders has not gone down well.

The cameras are inside the robotaxis to ensure both riders and the vehicles themselves are safe. A live feed is used to track lost property, make sure the vehicles are clean, and check that customers are following the rules for riding in the autonomous cars.

Soon after TechCrunch reported on the post, Waymo spokesperson Julia Ilina gave a statement to The Verge.

"Waymo's [machine learning] systems are not designed to use this data to identify individual people, and there are no plans to use this data for targeted ads," she said.

Ilina added that the "placeholder text" Wong found does not accurately reflect the feature's purpose, and that the feature is still in development. It "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."

There has been a lot of controversy over AI companies using data without permission to train their models – Waymo is owned by Alphabet, which is also the parent of Gemini and DeepMind owner Google. It's an even more contentious subject when that data is a person's likeness captured by cameras as they ride in a robotaxi, even if it is anonymized. Thankfully, it appears that customers can opt out of this practice.