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Privacy issues with the “Hugging Face” chatbot for teens
- philociraptor 10y agoWow. Just wow. That seems really sketchy.
- andrewclunn 10y agoIt's not a pic fool. Take a pic from the keyboard!
- jimmaswell 10y agoWhat is this even supposed to mean? "pic fool", "pic, fool"? from the keyboard?
- bitwize 10y agoThat line should be read in a Mr. T voice for maximum effect.
- dswalter 10y agoI've seen UNIX tools that were more robustly designed chatbots.
- StreakyCobra 10y agoEmacs psychotherapist? Can be tried online here: http://www.zenjero.net/morezen/doctor/ http://www.zenjero.net/morezen/doctor/
- DonHopkins 10y agoRMS -vs- Doctor http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-doctor.html http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-doctor.html
- DrScump 10y agoI don't get it. I tried: my imaginary friend dumped me; this has damaged my sense of self-worth. twice. Once, I got a random partial sentence; the second time, I just got "Are you sure that that?"
- M_Grey 10y agoI have to be honest, Louis C.K. is looking more and more wise and moderate by the day. Don't let your young teens have smartphones, even when all of their friends have one. I realize that's incredibly difficult, but no one said that parenting would be easy, and clearly you can't count on anyone else.
- mirimir 10y agoYes, well I tell people to make up personas, but ...
- M_Grey 10y agoI know, even as a teen that's what I did, probably you too. We have to accept though, that today people are growing up with a fully fledged set of social expectations, driven by marketing and peer pressure. When I was a teen, if I wanted to send a selfie it would have been a fairly involved process including a scanner. Now it's just a mistake you can make anytime. We're doing ourselves no favors as adults, but kids really are getting the greasy end of the stick.
- mirimir 10y agoUmmm, I still do :D But yeah, the Internet never forgets.[0] Maybe people will just need to cut each other more slack. [0] http://www.sltrib.com/home/4461113-155/kirby-the-internet-never-forgets http://www.sltrib.com/home/4461113-155/kirby-the-internet-ne...
- Freak_NL 10y ago> Don't let your young teens have smartphones, even when all of their friends have one. That's a nice way to get your child ostracised by the group. Once a teen leaves elementary not having a smartphone (specifically Android or IOS) is the kiss of death in this modern age.
- M_Grey 10y agoThat's a very very weak argument for conforming to a potentially harmful set of behaviors, and an old argument at that. "Go to church or your neighbors will shun you!" What an absurd amount of power and choice to cede to companies and people who do not care about you.
- JohnLeTigre 10y agoI wonder if they collect exif metadata (which may contain geolocation). This is creepy.
- mirimir 10y agoOne would expect so. Would be dumb not to, no?
- ianai 10y agoAnd lost on me is any reason anyone would want to use this chatbot? Does it at some point become an interesting conversationalist?
- pdelbarba 10y agoThis is creepy and all but why would anyone ever actually want to use this product? If I wanted to talk to a robot there are tons of much better chat bots.
- hvs 10y agoIt's not a pic fool. Take a pic from the keyboard! I'm sorry, is that English? I have no idea what that sentence means.
- soohyung 10y agoIt's calling you a fool for sending something that isn't a pic. The way I understood it it's also telling you to take a pic from the in-app keyboard but I haven't actually tried it so I can't confirm this.
- mbel 10y agoI guess that: "You fool! It is not a picture. Take a picture using supplied UI widget that resides in place where one would expect software keyboard." sounds less appealing to teenagers :)
- ouid 10y agoIt's not a pic fool. Take a pic from the keyboard!
- Sean1708 10y agoI suspect they meant "That's" rather than "It's".
- noxToken 10y agoAs expected, that didn't really answer the question. The co-founder just gave a soft answer. FTA: > [Hugging Face co-founder Clément Delangue] told me that the app asks for a selfie because the team discovered that users wanted to send selfies to their chatbot friend. "Selfies, for teenagers, are the main way of communicating emotions," Delangue said. "So we implemented this feature as a way for users to communicate with the AI." So it asks for a selfie, but it doesn't really need a selfie. Are you able to actually decline it, or is a picture with a face a requirement? I also don't quite understand this last bit: > Asking for a selfie automatically was for simplicity's sake, he explained. "We don't feel like we need to make the experience way more complex," Delangue said, "and 90 percent of the users are using it pretty seamlessly." What does "simplicity's sake" mean? He also states that users want to send the chatbot a selfie. That's fine but how does asking for it up front make any of the communication process any more simplified? I'm not saying these guys are up to some nefarious scheme (though it certainly seems like there's an ulterior motive - benign or not), but it doesn't make sense to me.
- deathhand 10y agoBecause a lot can be determined with a picture of a face.(age, race, and sex) If their goal is targeted advertising(which it is)this info is automatically filled out vs voluntary submission. This is just my armchair hypothesis of course.
- mirimir 10y agoI can't read "Hugging Face" without thinking "Alien" ;)
- nkrisc 10y agoI thought, at not even thirty, I was still young. Reading about this chat bot made realize I'm a lot older than I thought I was.
- coldpie 10y agoYeah, I'm the same age, and I had a really hard time even understanding this article. What does this thing do? Why would someone use it? What expectations would a user have for how their data will be used given that context? Does this article claim those expectations are being violated? I have no idea. Guess it's time to buy a porch and a rocking chair.
- jszymborski 10y agoI mean, the appeal is the same of SmarterChild[0] when that was a thing on MSN, or even ELIZA[1], if you want to go prehistoric. I had a moderate amount of fun with both of them when I was younger, trying to trip them up and testing their limits. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmarterChild https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmarterChild [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA
- jdormit 10y agoI dunno, this doesn't seem any creepier than Snapchat... They built a business where people send them free training data for their facial recognition ML.
- oculusthrift 10y agoi'm almost certain they are just using a simple viola jones type face detector that doesn't need additional training
- Kiro 10y agoPrivacy aside, isn't the whole point of the bot to send it selfies? The article makes it sound like it's some sneaky scam.
- nulagrithom 10y agoIs the phrase "privacy issues" referring to the supposed bug that prevented the chatbot from sending its privacy policy? I'm not really sure what this article is about. There's a chatbot out there that asks for selfies. The rest is FUD.
- jtruk 10y agoThe lack of regard for privacy is reflected in their beta signup page [1], which asks for age and phone number, and submits over HTTP connection. [1] http://huggingface.co/ http://huggingface.co/
- ajma 10y agoI sent them a picture of Donald Trump and the reply was "nice selfie"