Roomba hoovers customers' home mapping data
Robot, manufacturer of the robo-vacuum Roomba, has been considering selling data of customer to companies like Apple, Google and Amazon, according to Reuters. During the interview, iRobot CEO Colin Angle said 'There’s an entire ecosystem of things and services that the smart home can deliver once you have a rich map of the home that the user has allowed to be shared,” Angle said. He also told said that iRobot could reach a deal with Amazon, Alphabet, or Apple within the next couple of years to share their maps of users’ homes.' However, the company later claimed Angle's words had been taken out of context and that it had no plans to sell customer data. iRobot added support for Amazon’s Alexa voice recognition AI in March 2017. I n August 2022, Amazon announced a deal to acquire iRobot. The news incensed privacy advocates worried about the unethical sharing and commodification of sensitive personal data. System 🤖 iRobot website iRobot Wikipedia profile Roomba Wikipedia profile Developer: Amazon/iRobot Country: USA Sector: Consumer goods Purpose: Build spatial map Technology: Spatial mapping Issue: Privacy; Surveillance Transparency: Governance; Privacy
- Date it happened
- 2017-07-01
- Organisation involved
- Amazon/iRobot
- Product, system or model
- Roomba
This incident was imported from AIAAIC and is used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Our additions to it — the structured fields, the translation, the checks against other reports — are published under the same licence.
This is a record of what was reported, not a finding that anyone broke the law. If it names your organisation and you believe it is wrong, the corrections process is free and open to everyone.