EyeEma Berlin-based photo-sharing community that moved to a Spanish company last 12 months Freepik post-bankruptcy, it now licenses its users’ photos to train artificial intelligence models. Earlier this month, the corporate told users via email that it was adding a brand new clause to its Terms of Service that might grant it rights to submit user content to “train, develop and improve machine learning software, algorithms and models.” Users had 30 days to opt out to have all their content faraway from the EyeEm platform. Otherwise, they consented to this use case of their work.

At the time of the acquisition in 2023, EyeEm’s photo library contained 160 million images and nearly 150,000 users. The company has stated that it will merge its community with Freepik’s over time. According to data from the web site, despite the decline in its popularity, almost 30,000 people download it every month Applications.

Once considered a possible competitor to Instagram – or no less than the “European Instagram” – EyeEm shrunk to three employees before selling to Freepik, TechCrunch’s Ingrid Lunden previously reported. Joaquin Cuenca Abela, CEO of Freepik, hinted at the corporate’s possible plans for EyeEm, saying it could explore how to provide more artificial intelligence to creators on the platform.

As it seems, this meant selling his work to train artificial intelligence models.

Now EyeEm updated Terms reads as follows:

Section 13 details the complicated removal process, which begins with directly deleting photos – which doesn’t affect content previously shared on EyeEm magazine or social media, the corporate notes. To remove content from EyeEm Market (where photographers sold their photos) or other content platforms, users would have to send a request to support@eyeem.com and supply the content ID numbers of the photos they want removed and whether it needs to be removed. also faraway from their account or only from the EyeEm marketplace.

It is price noting that the notice indicates that it might take up to 180 days for data to be faraway from the EyeEm marketplace and partner platforms. Yes, that is right: it takes up to 180 days to remove requests, but users only have 30 days to opt out. This means your only option is to manually delete photos one after the other.

Worse yet, the corporate adds that:

Section 8 details licensing rights for AI training. In Section 10, EyeEm informs users that if they delete their account, they will be giving up their right to any compensation for his or her work – something users might want to consider to avoid having their data transferred to AI models.

EyeEm’s move is an example of how AI models are trained on users’ content, sometimes without their explicit consent. Although EyeEm offered an opt-out procedure of sorts, any photographer who missed this announcement would lose the best to dictate how their photos were utilized in the long run. Given that EyeEm’s status as a preferred alternative to Instagram has declined significantly through the years, many photographers can have forgotten they ever used it. They actually could have ignored the message if it wasn’t already of their spam folder somewhere.

Those who noticed the changes were upset that they only received 30 days’ notice and no options to bulk delete your entrieswhich makes giving up more painful.

Requests for comment sent to EyeEm weren’t immediately confirmed, but provided that the countdown was 30 days, we decided to post them before receiving a response.

This kind of unfair behavior is why users today are considering switching to an open social network. federation platform, Pixel powerwhich runs on the identical ActivityPub protocol as Mastodon, takes advantage of EyeEm’s situation to attract users.

In a post on his official Pixelfed account announced “We will never use your images to train artificial intelligence models. Privacy first, pixels forever.”

When Asheem Chandna arrived at Rubrik’s office in Palo Alto on a Friday evening in early 2015, he couldn’t wait to search out out what the young company that hadn’t yet created a product would show him. Greylock’s partner was not upset.

The company’s CEO, Bipul Sinha, drew on a whiteboard Rubrik’s plan to revamp the info management and recovery market. “The old and new architecture he presented was very convincing,” Chandna said. “Based on my knowledge of the industry, I knew it could be turned into a big business.”

It was a prophetic call. On Thursday, nine years after that meeting, Rubrik began its operations as a publicly traded company with: market capitalization exceeding $6 billion. Greylock owns 13% of the shares, in keeping with the newest SEC reports. By the close of trading Friday, at a share price of $38, nearly 19.9 million shares were value greater than $756 million.

But Chandna says he was motivated to steer the Rubrik team by rather more than simply a desire to tackle the arcane data recovery market. Series B for $40 million in May 2015. (According to SEC filings, the Series B round sold for $2.45 per share, adjusted for splits. Although Greylock also participated in later rounds at higher prices, Chandra’s profits from this round are enormous.)

“The longer I do what I do, the more I truly believe that venture is a people business,” said Chandna, who has been an investor for over 20 years and has an enviable track record of successful exits. He helped incubate Palo Alto Networks within the Greylock offices and until last 12 months served on the board of directors of the nearly $100 billion company. Chandna was also an early investor Application dynamics, Sumo logic and Arista Networks.

Chandna looks for individuals who are usually not only motivated and bold, but in addition aware of their weaknesses and may recruit individuals who can get things done in areas that are usually not the founder’s strong suit.

Another essential ingredient for the founder is sand. “If you had the right technology, but slightly inferior to mine, but you were very aware and persistent, you would beat me,” he said.

This is what he saw in Sinha. The founding father of Rubrik dreamed of beginning a company all his life. Chandra recalls that when he founded a knowledge management and recovery startup in 2013, he couldn’t find strong engineers willing to work there. The business he was attempting to construct wasn’t inherently sexy on the time.

Despite being an investor in Lightspeed for 4 years before founding Rubrik, recruiting talent proved to be a serious challenge for Sinha. But he didn’t quit. He called engineers on LinkedIn after which invited them to coffee breaks outside the workplace.

“The startup path is very difficult, even for the most successful companies,” Chandna said. “I want people who won’t take no for an answer.”

Perhaps it was Sinha’s resolve and ambition that forced him to take his company public despite the unfavorable IPO atmosphere.

“Rubrik has almost $800 million in annual recurring revenue,” Chandna said. “This is more than most companies that have gone public in the last many years. I think they just wanted to keep it going.”

Chandna would not say whether he expects other Greylock portfolio corporations to follow Rubrik’s lead, but added emphatically that the best-performing late-stage corporations are Abnormal Security, Cato Networks, Discord, Figma and Lyra Health.

We will follow their fate closely.

Following a successful demonstration at CES, Rabbit is giving journalists the opportunity to check out the R1, a small orange gadget with an AI-powered voice interface. This comes just weeks after the launch of the Humane Ai Pin, which is similarly touted as a brand new breed of mobile device with artificial intelligence at the center.

While we’re still waiting for detailed reviews (slightly than initial hands-on testing) of the R1, there are some pretty stark differences between the two devices.

Most noticeably, the Ai Pin is screenless and relies on a voice and projector interface, while the R1 has a 2.88-inch screen (though it’s intended for way more than simply entering your Wi-Fi password). And while the AI ​​Pin costs $699 plus a $24 monthly subscription, the R1 costs just $199. Both, in accordance with TechCrunch’s Brian Heater, display the value of fine industrial design.

It seems that neither Ai Pin (who has some really scathing reviews) nor R1 makes a completely convincing argument that it is time to interchange our smartphones or that AI chatbots are the best strategy to get information from the Internet. But most of all, what’s exciting is that the hardware industry is wide open again. Press play after which tell us for those who’re playing to check out R1 or Ai Pin!