Tinder Plans to Let AI Scan Your Camera Roll

Source: 404 Media

Tinder plans to let machine vision algorithms loose on your camera roll. Instead of building a profile on their own, AI will scan users’ locally-stored photos—everything from gym selfies to pictures of their family, sensitive documents and dick pics—to help construct profiles by determining what users’ interests and values are.

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The feature is still being tested, with early access only available in Australia beginning this month. Although Tinder says it attempts to filter out explicit images, users may still be concerned with Tinder's AI scanning their entire camera roll. “It's up to you to figure out what you're comfortable sharing back with Tinder,” Tinder Head of Product Mark Kantor told 404 Media. Still, users can’t pick individual photos they want analyzed or ignored. Tinder’s safeguards are meant to filter out explicit images or text, and to blur faces before insights are processed.

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If the camera roll is a window into the modern soul, it is also a goldmine of personal information. Depending on what someone photographs, their camera roll could include everything from photos of sensitive documents, like banking or medical info, to nudes. It’s a potential security nightmare, especially when people are sharing intimate details about themselves or their dating lives. Security failures on dating apps like Tea put users in danger: multiple breaches exposed personal information, including photos, driver’s license information, and direct messages, before it was finally yanked from the App Store. Tinder has had its own privacy and security issues. Last year, we revealed the dating app was one of thousands co-opted to mine location data. In January, hackers claimed to have stolen internal data from Match Group, which owns Tinder.

According to Kantor, Tinder isn’t storing the data it pulls from photos on its end. “It's purely on your device,” he said. Tinder won’t scan your deleted photos, or anything from your phone’s hidden folder; after it’s finished scouring your images, the AI selects specific photos for users to choose to upload to their public profile. If the AI’s categorization of a user as, say, a dog person is inaccurate, users can note that feedback and choose to either accept or reject the AI’s insights. Anything that doesn’t go on someone’s profile is deleted, and if users want new insights later, they’ll have to do the process all over again, according to Tinder.

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Read more: https://www.404media.co/tinder-plans-to-let-ai-scan-your-camera-roll/

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This is an incredibly dumb idea, but there are probably some AI-addled people who'll think it's brilliant.

It's another way for Tinder to gather data it will probably sell to third parties, as well as hand over to the government if asked.

You'd be foolish to trust Tinder not to upload and save all your photos.