[NFB-Idaho] Be aware

[tj at tjsquires.net]

Hi there,

There is also an email address (optout at bemyeyes.com) where you can opt out of all of the sharing of your data lined out in the privacy policy. That said, privacy policy or not, be careful of what you put out on the internet in general.


-----Original Message-----
From: NFB-Idaho <nfb-idaho-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Kevin Pirnie via NFB-Idaho
Sent: Wednesday, October 16, 2024 5:19 PM
To: NFB of Idaho Discussion List <nfb-idaho at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Kevin Pirnie <kpirnie77 at gmail.com>
Subject: [NFB-Idaho] Be aware

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 _______________________________________________
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