Xuhui police expand facial recognition surveillance to profile 1.1 million residents
The Xuhui District branch of the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Public Security is expanding its Intelligent Image Recognition System, adding 2,500 facial recognition cameras and increased computing capacity to build profiles of residents and flag deviations. The project, contracted to US-sanctioned FiberHome, is designed to match each face to files on more than 50 million people. Officials say the system will analyse behaviour patterns and trigger early warnings.
- Company involved
- Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Public Security, Xuhui District Branch
- AI system involved
- Intelligent Image Recognition System
3 source articles · read the reporting →
Users jailbreak Luma Labs Dream Machine to generate porn
Users have jailbroken Luma Labs' Dream Machine, an AI video generator, to create explicit videos. The system's safeguards were bypassed to generate pornographic content. The videos are crude but demonstrate the potential for widespread AI-generated porn. Luma Labs' terms of service prohibit such content.
- Company involved
- Luma Labs
- AI system involved
- Dream Machine
3 source articles · read the reporting →
Dahua Exposed for Uyghur Tracking Software in Surveillance Systems
Dahua Technology's publicly available SDK was found to contain code for detecting Uyghur ethnicity, enabling Chinese police to covertly track the persecuted minority. The revelation led to widespread criticism, and Dahua removed the SDK after being contacted by IPVM but did not comment. The company had previously been sanctioned by the US for complicity in human rights abuses against Uyghurs, and its software is part of a massive surveillance apparatus in Xinjiang.
- Company involved
- Dahua Technology
- AI system involved
- Dahua SDK
1 source article · read the reporting →
Adobe Stock creators say Firefly trained on their images without consent
Adobe Stock contributors allege that Adobe trained its Firefly generative AI model on their stock images without express notification or consent. They say Firefly's popularity is reducing demand for their stock photos and flooding the platform with AI-generated images. Adobe says Firefly is still in beta and it is committed to compensating creators, with details to come when generally available.
- Company involved
- Adobe
- AI system involved
- Adobe Firefly
1 source article · read the reporting →
Brazilian children's photos scraped into LAION-5B AI dataset without consent
Human Rights Watch found that LAION-5B, a dataset used to train AI tools, contains identifiable photos of Brazilian children scraped from the web without their knowledge or consent. The dataset includes names and locations of children. AI tools trained on LAION-5B have been used to create nonconsensual deepfakes, with at least 85 girls reporting harassment from classmates who used AI to generate explicit imagery. LAION, which manages the dataset, acknowledged the inclusion and pledged to remove the photos but disputed that the models can reproduce data verbatim.
- Company involved
- LAION
- AI system involved
- LAION-5B
7 source articles · read the reporting →
Australian children's photos scraped into LAION-5B AI dataset without consent
Human Rights Watch found that the LAION-5B dataset, used to train AI tools, contains links to identifiable photos of Australian children scraped from the web without consent. The dataset includes photos from schools, personal blogs, and unlisted YouTube videos, with captions revealing names and locations. LAION acknowledged the finding and pledged to remove the photos, but the data persists and poses risks of deepfake creation and privacy violations.
- Company involved
- LAION
- AI system involved
- LAION-5B
4 source articles · read the reporting →
Disney accused of using AI imagery for Loki promotional materials
Disney is accused of using AI-generated imagery in promotional materials for the second season of the Disney+ series Loki. An illustrator on X flagged the image, pointing out telltale signs of AI generation in the background. The article states that the image appears to be based on a Shutterstock stock photo, and that Disney did not respond to the allegations. The use of AI is alleged to harm artists and photographers who rely on licensing income.
- Company involved
- Disney
8 source articles · read the reporting →
Adobe accused of selling unlabelled AI-generated Israel–Palestine images on Adobe Stock
Adobe has been accused of selling AI-generated images of the Israel–Palestine conflict on Adobe Stock without clearly labelling them as synthetic. The photorealistic images, produced with tools such as Firefly, could be mistaken for authentic photography and fuel misinformation. An investigation by Interesting Engineering found many images that appeared to be AI-generated but were not labelled as such. Adobe's published policy says Stock accepts AI-generated content if it meets submission standards.
- Company involved
- Adobe
- AI system involved
- Adobe Firefly
7 source articles · read the reporting →
Lensa AI app generated nudes from user's childhood photos
Lensa, a photo-editing AI app, generated sexualized and nude images from users' uploaded photos, including childhood photos of writer Olivia Snow. Snow alleges the app violated its own terms by producing full nudity and child sexual exploitation material, and that it whitened and sexualised women of colour's images. The app's lack of content moderation and oversight allowed these harmful outputs, with no response from the company.
- Company involved
- Lensa
- AI system involved
- Lensa
9 source articles · read the reporting →
Prisma Labs wins arbitration in Lensa biometric privacy lawsuit
Artificial intelligence company Prisma Labs is accused of violating Illinois' biometric privacy law by collecting facial geometry data from users of its Lensa app. A proposed class action was filed, but a California federal judge granted Prisma's motion to compel arbitration because users agreed to it during sign-up. The plaintiff alleges the app collected his facial data without consent.
- Company involved
- Prisma Labs Inc.
- AI system involved
- Lensa AI
8 source articles · read the reporting →
LAION temporarily takes down 5B dataset after Stanford finds potential CSAM
Stanford researchers reported that the LAION 5B training dataset contains potentially illegal content in the form of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). LAION, a non-profit organization that provides datasets for machine learning research, acknowledged the reports and temporarily took down the datasets to ensure they are safe before republishing. LAION is working with the Internet Watch Foundation and the Hamburg State Data Protection Commissioner to address the issue.
- Company involved
- LAION
- AI system involved
- LAION 5B
6 source articles · read the reporting →
Midjourney faces criticism over database of 16,000 artists used to train AI
A database listing 16,000 artists, including a six-year-old child, has been circulated, alleging that Midjourney used their works to train its text-to-image generator. The list was submitted as evidence in a class-action copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, Stability AI, and DeviantArt. The artists accuse the companies of scraping their work without permission. Midjourney did not respond to requests for comment.
- Company involved
- Midjourney
- AI system involved
- Midjourney
8 source articles · read the reporting →
Apple accused of copyright infringement over AI training data by SUNY professors
Two State University of New York professors, Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen L. Macknik, have accused Apple of copyright infringement in a proposed class action lawsuit. They allege that Apple used pirated materials, including a database called Books3 containing their works, to train its AI tool Apple Intelligence. The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, claims Apple continues to use pirated books for training without compensating rightsholders.
- Company involved
- Apple Inc.
- AI system involved
- Apple Intelligence
8 source articles · read the reporting →
