Korean app-maker Scatter Lab fined for using private data to create homophobic and lewd chatbot
- Reference: 1619674088
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/04/29/scatter_lab_fined_for_lewd_chatbot/
- Source link:
The recipient of the honor is Seoul-based start-up Scatter Lab, who was ordered to pay 103.3 million won (US$93k) for not obtaining proper user permissions.
[1]
The company illegally harvested data from 9.4 billion conversations conducted by 600,000 users of its other apps, "Science of Love" and "Text At",
The Science of Love app focused on conversations between romantic partners to predict a partner's true levels of affection. Those insecure about their mates could pay equivalent US$4.50 to upload their KakaoTalk messenger logs to Science of Love and be reassured of (or disappointed by) their partner's level of love.
The app was a hit. By summer 2020 Science of Love had been downloaded 7.5 million times in South Korean and Japan and Scatter Lab planned to start capitalizing on relationship insecurity in the US.
[2]
However, expansion came to a screeching halt when Scatter Lab added a chatbot service named "Lee-Luda", marketed as a 20-something AI friend available for those who'd given up on human interaction.
However, Lee-Luda had a proclivity towards lewd and [3]homophobic speech, and she also leaked personal data . Furthermore, Lee Luda’s training data was uploaded to GitHub thus exposing names, locations, relationship status and even some medical information.
In a devastating blow to all eight of you, Microsoft pulls the plug on Cortana's Android, iOS apps [4]READ MORE
Lee-Luda was shut down and Science of Love was slammed with damming [5]Google Play reviews .
It gets worse: some of the data used to build the bot was from children, as Scatter Lab did not obtain parental consent before allowing 200,000 users under the age of 14 to join Science of Love and Text At.
[6]
The 103.3 million won charges break down to a penalty surcharge of 55.5 million won (US$50k) and an administrative fine of 47.8 million won (US$43k).
“Because the user’s right to self-control of personal information is limited, the user may suffer unpredictable damages,” states an [7]announcement by Korea’s data protection watchdog, the Personal Information Protection Commission (PPIC). ®
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[3] https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/15/in_brief_ai/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/01/microsofts_cortana_smartphone/
[5] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.scatterlab.soljr&hl=ko&gl=US
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[7] https://www.pipc.go.kr/np/cop/bbs/selectBoardArticle.do?bbsId=BS074&mCode=C020010000&nttId=7298&fbclid=IwAR3SKcMQi6G5pR9k4I7j6GNXtc8aBVDOwcURevvvzQtYI7AS40UKYXoOXo8
[8] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Capitalizing on relationship insecurity
Sounds like they tried to hard. They just needed another app to check if your "partner" had uploaded your private conversations to a third party without your knowledge or consent and the spiral of mistrust could have generated decades of income.
It's not the first time an AI-powered chat-bot has been shut down because it deviated into not-so-politically-correct speech. Some time ago the same happened to Microsoft's chat bot. So-called "AI" systems have no intelligence despite the name (although they are artificial, no doubt about that), their "speech" comes from statistical analysis of the speech of human inter-actors. In a way, the poor tensor processors are good at reflecting the general mood of the crowd, nothing more.
So who is to blame? Where do you think a simple, stupid chat-bots learned the hate speech? Of course, you can break the mirror if you don't like what you see, but your face will still be the same.
I'm lovely. And anyone who says different can fuck right off!
Leeches
ScatterLab sounds like a thoroughly nice outfit, another social media company preying on human weaknesses and monetising them.
They got off too lightly.