Photo sharing community EyeEm will license users’ photos to train AI if they don’t delete them

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.”