[NFB-Idaho] Be aware

[Kevin Pirnie]

Bose shared this post with me from a Facebook group. It is very alarming if
you’ve ever used Be My Eyes or be my AI to scan personal documents
information of a private or personal nature. It could be out there
everywhere now and who knows who’s hands.


Bose Pirnie , Can we talk about AI and our privacy? I was flabbergasted to
learn Be My AI keeps all the videos, questions and photos you submit
through the apps, indefinitely, and has free reign to use them almost any
way they like. This isn't just my opinion: it's clearly spelt out in the
privacy policy ( https://www.bemyeyes.com/privacy ) and terms of service (
https://www.bemyeyes.com/terms ). There is an informal process by which you
can email legal at bemyeyes.com and request deletion of your data, but that's
it. You can't access the chatlogs, you can't review what data is associated
with your account. This is in contrast to e.g. ChatGPT, Gemini, etc. where
while data is kept about you, at least a side benefit is that you can
review it whenever you want. They also have more reasonable privacy
policies where you can opt out of your data being used to train their
models, or being retained/attached to your account for long periods of
time. I got an Email about opting out from even more additional research
from Be My AI, but that doesn't change the text of the terms of use and
privacy policy. In an era when we're constantly hearing about data breaches
or leaks, I'm just not okay with this. I'm not sure how many other blind
people have really considered the implications of this. I know I didn't
until I reviewed the policies. Combining metadata like location data in
photos, personal data like Email and IP address, and your entire photo
history, a data leak would provide a hugely detailed profile of you and
your history combined with a small and niche community where identifying
you would be trivial. For now, I've switched to using the OpenAI or Google
Gemini APIs directly. The OpenAI API costs a fraction of a cent per image,
while Gemini provides a generous amount of free tokens per day and then you
can pay if you want more. I use this free app for iOS called Pal, I imagine
there are other apps for iOS or other apps for other platforms, where I can
use my own API account:
https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/pal-chat-ai-chat-client/id6447545085 Freedom
Scientific's PictureSmart which uses similar AI partners as Be My AI says
they don't retain your data, and ChatGPT, Google Gemini and their APIs have
reasonable options for controlling data retention and opting out of data
being used for training. Should we be calling on companies to improve their
privacy practices? With this exciting new video model being worked on where
we will be able to ask questions on live videos, I want to know that the
privacy policies are reasonable, no indefinite data retention, when I start
using it. I just don't see the need to keep all this data indefinitely.
ETA: I know many don't care about their privacy. 🙂 This post isn't really
for you, although of course you're welcome  to comment. , 4:40 PM