[SC-CSTD] FW: An Important Message for All Users of the Be My Eyes App from our Founder

Thu Jul 25 18:11:33 UTC 2024

From: Be My Eyes <info at bemyeyes.com> 
Sent: Thursday, July 25, 2024 10:15 AM
To: floza58 at bellsouth.net
Subject: An Important Message for All Users of the Be My Eyes App from our Founder

Hello Frank Loza,

My name is Hans Jørgen Wiberg and I am the blind founder of Be My Eyes.

Tomorrow we will be making an important announcement, and we wanted you as a user of our products to know first. The announcement is about the fast-paced developments in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector, along with our own role and responsibilities in it:

1.	We intend to provide video data to organizations to train AI models to be more inclusive and representative of the blind and low vision community
2.	We are strengthening our data and privacy policy - and making it more restrictive - to ensure you have even greater control over if and how your data is used

We are taking these steps to ensure our users, and the blind and low-vision community generally, are not left out of the innovative power of AI, and that AI models are trained using data that reflects the real, relevant, and lived experiences of people who are blind or have low vision.

The 26th of July this year is the 34th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the United States’ strongest measure protecting the civil rights of people with disabilities. With equivalent acts around the world such as the European Accessibility Act (EAA), there has perhaps never been a stronger focus on ensuring equality and inclusion for all. However, with the exponential rise of AI technologies beginning to impact every element of our lives, there has also never been a greater risk of undoing all the great work that has been done to-date.

That’s because AI is developing at a breakneck speed, and we are already starting to see examples of biased characterizations of blindness and even offensive language being surfaced through AI, as well as less than inclusive responses to otherwise reasonable questions. There is no suggestion that this is deliberate. Blind people have simply not had the opportunity to inject their own experience into the extremely fast-paced development of AI models. So the potential for AI-generated bias and exclusion is very real, and completely contrary to the principles of the ADA, the EEA, and our own  <https://www.bemyeyes.com/about> Be My Eyes’ mission.

Addressing this problem requires data to ensure that AI models are trained using information that reflects the real, relevant, and lived experiences of people who are blind or have low vision.

That is why tomorrow we will be announcing an initiative that would provide video data - in the form of conversations between blind and low-vision users and sighted volunteers around real and lived experiences - to organizations to train their AI models without such bias, and proactively develop a more accessible and inclusive AI future.

However, we will only be doing so under the governance of a strengthened privacy policy that will ensure every one of our users, including you, has a choice to opt-out. And even if you do opt out, you will still be able to use all Be My Eyes’ products and services. Importantly, we will also announce that none of your photos or their AI descriptions in Be My AI will be shared for AI training purposes. This is because those results likely include the biases in current AI models - which is exactly what we want to avoid in future training.

I believe there is a moral imperative to ensure AI models not only account for blindness and blind people, but do so in a way that is consistent with our actual experiences, capabilities, and power. Our premise is simple: Our mission is to make the world more accessible for people who are blind or have low vision and that must include shaping the future of AI.

Be My Eyes has also heard from many of our 675,000 blind and low-vision users, who have told us that they would like their own experiences to play an active role in shaping the future of AI technology.

An example of this is explained by Bryan Bashin, Vice Chair of Be My Eyes, who is also blind: “Last year, 19,000 blind beta testers participated in a group that made OpenAI models materially better for the blind community. Their feedback and data convinced OpenAI to allow more robust and fuller facial descriptions of people to be generated from photos. Think about that. Blind people directly shaped the most utilized AI model in the world - and bent it to their needs. We need more of this at scale and we need it quickly.”

As AI models continue to speed up the acquisition and importing of data, we see incorporating disability data as an urgent and immediate need, and will therefore continue to work with the disability community on inclusive solutions for a more accessible world, alongside and in partnership with you, our users.

If you would prefer not to participate in this video data sharing initiative, then we fully respect your decision. You can opt out now by clicking this personal  <https://api.bemyeyes.com/mail/en/ai-training?uid=14805a64-fe23-4bdc-9ae3-411e3420b1b8> link.

But we hope you will not opt out. We hope you will join us, and that together we can help build a more inclusive AI future together.

I’ve shared more information below. Thank you for being part of the Be My Eyes community.

With best regards,

Hans Jørgen Wiberg 
Founder, Be My Eyes

  _____  

Further Details - Strengthening the Be My Eyes Privacy Policy

As the world’s leading provider of accessibility services for people who are blind or have low vision, Be My Eyes is in the unique position of having significant data on the real and lived experiences of that community. This data falls into three distinct categories:

1.	User Account Data. This is basic and limited data about our users including their name, email address, preferred languages, and approximate location.
2.	Photos and associated AI descriptions. These are the photos and images that our users share with Be My AI, and the corresponding AI-generated descriptions of those images.
3.	Video data from calls with volunteers. These videos are stored primarily for quality, safety, and to improve our services. These are the calls where Be My Eyes automatically connects a user with an unknown volunteer to assist with accessibility needs. For example, the two most frequent types of calls to volunteers are for product distinction, and to read instructions and describe images.

Our current terms and policies state that while we don’t normally share information with any third party, photos and video data can be shared for the purposes of product improvement, research, and AI training. Today we are tightening that policy in 3 specific ways:

Policy change #1 - No Photo Sharing. Be My Eyes will not share photos or their AI descriptions to third parties for training. We believe this data is not likely to be useful for AI training, and in fact, might reinforce bias that exists in current results. The only exception will be for alpha and beta tests of new AI models, but these will involve users in these tests signing separate and specific permission agreements.

Policy change #2 - Video Opt Out. Be My Eyes will allow any user to opt-out of sharing videos, and that opt out will apply to the user’s past, present and future videos. An opt-out will not affect a user’s ability to access the full Be My Eyes service.

Policy change #3 - Auto Data Deletion. Be My Eyes has historically saved encrypted image data for quality control, service improvement, and to comply with law enforcement requests. By January of 2025, we will update our policies to include a time frame for auto deletion of all image data.

These policy changes are being further reinforced with the Principles for Data Sharing that be My Eyes is committed to adhering to:

1.	Transparency and Disclosure: Be My Eyes will act with transparency and disclosure around data usage and provision, and will ensure our user community is always notified of any significant changes to our policies. For the full privacy policy  <https://www.bemyeyes.com/privacy> Click here.
2.	Full Consumer Choice and Opt-Out Program: Be My Eyes will provide a full opt-out choice from sharing all past, present, and future video data for anyone in the Be My Eyes’ user community. Regardless of what they choose, users can continue to get the benefit of all the services Be My Eyes offers.
3.	Strict Limitations on Data Use: Any data partnership will include written agreements prohibiting marketing and advertising use (no data mining allowed), no sharing with unaffiliated third parties, and ensuring safe storage and deletion of data post-training. Be My Eyes will also delete personal information from video metadata prior to any sharing. No data from Be My Eyes enterprise products (such as Service Connect, also known as Specialized Help and Be My Eyes for Work) or Be My Eyes Groups, our friends and family product, will be used in training.
4.	Blind Leadership: The blind members of Be My Eyes' Board of Directors have ultimate authority over AI training and data decisions and had veto power over this policy and every one of these four principles.

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