Smart security camera company Eufy offered owners of its products $2 to submit videos it could use to train its artificial intelligence software in a campaign that ran last winter. As reported earlier by TechCrunch, Eufy launched a promotion to collect 20,000 videos of package thefts and 20,000 videos of people pulling on car doors. For the purposes of the campaign, it didn’t matter if the videos were real or if owners staged the videos.
The concept of services directly paying customers for data or content that will be used to train AI software is still fairly uncommon. Recently, a popular app called Neon offered to pay people for recordings of their phone calls that it would then sell to AI companies. That app is currently on hold while the company addresses security issues, but the company’s founder said it will return soon.
Eufy did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the campaign.
AI companies are continually seeking new sources of data to train their AI models. In this case, Eufy, which is owned by the tech company Anker, appeared to be working on improving its own software to detect on-camera incidents of package thefts and attempted car thefts or carjackings.
According to a community posting, Eufy was seeking a maximum of 10 videos from any one device for each of the two activities, for a maximum of $20 payout per device. The campaign ran from Dec. 18, 2024 to Feb. 25, 2025.
In the past few years, Eufy has had a few security missteps, including a flaw that uploaded local videos online without permission to cloud servers and one that exposed private videos to strangers.
