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Vishal Narayan

AI database caught scraping real images of children without consent



More than 170 images of Brazilian children have been found to have been scraped off the internet to be fed into AI repository LAION-5B, Human Rights Watch said in a report on Monday. 


According to the civil rights group, many of these images, which it said constituted a fraction of over 5 billion overall images in the database, were identifiable through captions. 


The images were scraped through family blogs, stills from YouTube videos with few views, and other social media, the HRW said. 


"Children should not have to live in fear that their photos might be stolen and weaponized against them," said Hye Jung Han, children's rights and technology researcher and advocate at Human Rights Watch. "The government should urgently adopt policies to protect children’s data from AI-fueled misuse."