Smart security camera company Eufy offered owners of its products $2 to submit videos that they could use to train its artificial intelligence software as part of a campaign it ran last winter. IF previously reported by TechCrunchEufy launched a campaign to collect 20,000 videos of package thefts and 20,000 videos of people opening car doors. For the purposes of the campaign, it didn’t matter if the videos were real or if the owners staged them.
The concept of services where customers are paid directly for data or content used to train ai software is still quite unusual. Recently, a popular app called Neon proposed paying users for recordings of their phone calls, which they would then sell to artificial intelligence companies. This app is currently down while the company fixes security issues, but the company’s founder said it will be back soon.
Eufy did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the campaign.
AI companies are constantly looking for new data sources to train their AI models. In this case, Eufy, part of technology company Anker, was apparently improving its software to detect incidents of package theft and attempted theft or vehicle theft via camera.
According to Community contributionEufy searched for up to ten videos from each device for each of the two activities, for a maximum payment of $20 per device. The promotion ran from December 18, 2024 to February 25, 2025.
In recent years, Eufy has encountered a number of security bugs, including one that allowed local online videos to be uploaded to cloud servers without permission and another that made private videos accessible to strangers.
