South Korea's privacy watchdog fined TikTok 10.3 billion won ($7M) for illegally collecting users' behavioral data for personalized ads and also fined Apple Inc. 252 million won for collecting Siri voice recordings and transcripts without consent.
A report reveals significant flaws in India's agriculture data collection, with 'girdawari' (crop enumeration) completed on time in less than half the country. Outdated maps and untrained staff conducting crop-cutting experiments further compromise food security data.
China's CAICT has introduced the industry's first voluntary code of conduct for AI smart glasses, urging manufacturers to adopt minimum data collection, clear recording indicators, and explicit user consent. This follows public outrage over covert filming incidents involving devices from companies like Rokid.
AI firm Micro AGI is offering free cleaning and private chef services in New York City through its 'Shift' initiative. The catch is that all activities are recorded to train future robots, raising privacy concerns among experts.
Coupang expressed regret over a record 624.7 billion won (US$410 million) fine from South Korea's data regulator for a data breach affecting over 37 million users and unauthorized collection of online activity data.
Workers at SoFi Stadium in California vote on authorizing a strike ahead of the 2026 World Cup, citing stalled contract negotiations with Legends Global for better wages and safety guarantees, including protection from ICE presence.
Uber revealed a prototype Hyundai Ioniq 5 equipped with advanced sensors, designed to collect driving data for its autonomous vehicle partners. The company plans to deploy 500 such vehicles globally this year to gather millions of miles of data for training self-driving software.
Meta is scaling back its AI data tracking tool, the Model Capability Initiative (MCI), after significant employee backlash. New controls allow employees to pause data collection and request exemptions, addressing concerns about privacy, battery life, and control.
Meta is reducing its employee computer activity tracking for AI training after staff backlash. New controls allow employees to pause data collection and request exemptions.
The EEOC is proposing to end its annual EEO-1 data collection and rescind a 1979 regulation allowing employers to address race/gender imbalances. Chair Andrea Lucas argues programs favoring specific groups are unlawful, while critics fear this will hinder discrimination enforcement.
Nvidia introduced H2+ (Isaac GR00T), a new design aimed at streamlining humanoid robotics development, from data collection to real-world deployment. CEO Jensen Huang highlighted data as the primary challenge in agentic and physical AI systems during a keynote at Taipei's Computex conference.
France is experiencing a significant rise in crypto 'wrench attacks,' involving physical assaults and kidnappings targeting digital asset holders. Bitcoin journalist Joe Nakamoto reports 41 such incidents in 2026, attributing the trend to compromised KYC data and urging increased security measures.
The Trump administration is proposing to end a decades-old mandate requiring companies with 100+ employees to report race, ethnicity, and sex data of their workforce. The EEOC used this data to identify and prosecute discrimination cases, like the one against Bass Pro Shops. EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas, however, believes the data is shared too widely and can lead to race-motivated decisions.
India's 21st Livestock Census report, initially expected by late 2024, is delayed until after June 2026 due to technical issues in data validation, impacting policy decisions on livestock management.
Texas AG Ken Paxton sues Netflix for allegedly spying on users, including children, by collecting and monetizing their data without consent, despite promises of privacy.
Ken Paxton accuses streamer of designing addictive platform and falsely representing data collection practicesTexas sued Netflix on Monday, accusing the streaming company of spying on children and designing its platform to be addictive.Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, said Netflix has for years falsely represented to consumers that it did not collect or share user data, when it actually tracked and sold viewers’ habits and preferences to commercial data brokers and advertising technology companies, making billions of dollars a year. Continue reading...
A desk with a laptop and a stack of books. A shirt waiting to be folded. A kitchen counter, a milk-tea stand and pile of building blocks – all in a single room. Robots of different shapes face their tasks with focus, controlled by a human operator. Pick up. Place. Fold. Repeat. This is not a film set, it is a data collection factory for embodied intelligence – a de facto “data foundry”. The facility, in Shanghai’s Zhangjiang hi-tech zone, is run by Agibot, a fast-rising robotics company. The...
Neurable, a non-invasive brain-computer interface company, announced plans to license its mind-reading technology to consumer wearable manufacturers across health, athletic, productivity, and gaming industries. The company uses EEG sensors and AI to analyze cognitive performance without requiring brain surgery, distinguishing it from invasive competitors like Neuralink. Neurable raised $35 million in Series A funding in December and already partners with HP's HyperX for gaming headsets and iMotions for research. CEO Ramses Alcaide says the company follows HIPAA standards, encrypts and anonymizes user data, and only uses neural data for AI training with explicit user consent for specific experiments.
Indian startups Humyn AI, FPV Labs, Neo Cambrian and Objectways are collecting egocentric (first-person view) video data to train robotics systems. Workers in factories wear GoPro cameras recording tasks like assembling components. Leading robotics labs need 100 million to 1 billion hours of such data in the next 2-3 years, with each single robot task requiring 100,000 to 1 million hours of training data.
