EyeEm to License User Photos for AI Training Unless Deleted
EyeEm, the photo-sharing community based in Berlin which exited last year to Spanish firm Freepik post bankruptcy, has begun licensing users’ photographs to educate AI models. In the early part of this month, EyeEm added a new term to its Terms & Conditions through an email notification to its users that will allow it to upload user content to “develop, train, and refine software, algorithms, and machine-learning models.” If users did not remove all their content from EyeEm’s platform within 30 days, it was considered as consent to this usage for their work.
At its acquisition time in 2023, the photo library of EyeEm comprised nearly 160 million images and almost 150,000 users. The firm had plans to merge its community with that of Freepik’s in due course. Inspite of its downfall, it is still downloaded by around 30,000 people each month based on Appfigures data.
Though once considered a likely competitor to Instagram, or at least acknowledged as “Europe’s Instagram”, before being sold to Freepik, EyeEm had reduced to a staff strength of three, as reported by TechCrunch’s Ingrid Lunden earlier. Freepik’s CEO Joaquin Cuenca Abela had given hints about prospective plans for EyeEm, discussing the possibility of introducing more AI for the creators on the platform.
Which, it appears, meant their work essentially being sold for training AI models.
EyeEm’s recently revised Terms & Conditions now state:
Section 8.1 – Grant of Rights – EyeEm Community
When you upload Content to the EyeEm Community, you are giving us non-exclusive, global, transferable, and licensable permission to use, distribute, publicly display, modify, create derivatives of, disseminate, and/or publicize said Content.
This specifically includes the licensed, transferable right to use your Content for the purpose of training, developing, and improving software, algorithms, and machine learning models. If you do not agree to this, you should not upload your Content to the EyeEm Community.
The given permissions in section 8.1 regarding your shared content stay effective until it gets completely removed from the EyeEm Community and partner platforms as directed in section 13. It is within your rights to demand the elimination of your content whenever required. The process for this is mentioned in section 13.
Section 13 elaborates on a complex protocol for deletions which starts with initial removal of photos directly. This action does not interfere with content which has been previously propagated to the EyeEm Magazine or on social media platforms, as stated by the company. To eliminate content from the EyeEm Market (a platform where photographers put up their photos for sale) or other content platforms, users have to place a request at support@eyeem.com. They need to give the Content ID numbers for the specific photos they intend to delete. They also need to specify if it should be deleted from their account only, or from the EyeEm Market.
Interestingly, the directive informs that these deletions from EyeEm Market and the partner platforms may take as much as 180 days. Indeed, the deletion requests take up to 180 days but users get only 30 days time to opt out. Thus, the only feasible way is to delete photos individually.
Adding to this, the company mentions that:
You hereby acknowledge and agree that your authorization for EyeEm to market and license your Content according to sections 8 and 10 will remain valid until the Content is deleted from EyeEm and all partner platforms within the time frame indicated above. All license agreements entered into before complete deletion and the rights of use granted thereby remain unaffected by the request for deletion or the deletion.
Section 8 is where licensing rights to train AI are detailed. In Section 10, EyeEm informs users they will forgo their right to any payouts for their work if they delete their account — something users may think to do to avoid having their data fed to AI models. Gotcha!
EyeEm’s move is an example of how AI models are being trained on the back of users’ content, sometimes without their explicit consent. Though EyeEm did offer an opt-out procedure of sorts, any photographer who missed the announcement would have lost the right to dictate how their photos were to be used going forward. Given that EyeEm’s status as a popular Instagram alternative had significantly declined over the years, many photographers may have forgotten they had ever used it in the first place. They certainly may have ignored the email, if it wasn’t already in a spam folder somewhere.
Those who did notice the changes were upset they were only given a 30-day notice and no options to bulk delete their contributions, making it more painful to opt out.
Has anyone figured out a way to batch delete their photos from #EyeEm. I got this email yesterday. While I only have 60 photos there, I’d prefer not to feed the training data beast for free… pic.twitter.com/lUuDR5BnGb
— Powen Shiah @polexa@tech.lgbt (@polexa) April 5, 2024
Suggest existing @EyeEm users run away fast. They’ve sneaked in this destructive rights grab as an opt out: “These rights now include the sublicensable and transferable right to use your Content to train, develop, and improve software, algorithms, and machine-learning models.”
— Joel Goodman (@pixel8foto) April 3, 2024
Requests for comment sent to EyeEm weren’t immediately confirmed, but given this countdown had a 30-day deadline, we’ve opted to publish before hearing back.
This sort of dishonest behavior is why users today are considering a move to the open social web. The federated platform, Pixelfed, which runs on the same ActivityPub protocol that powers Mastodon, is capitalizing on the EyeEm situation to attract users.
In a post on its official account, Pixelfed announced “We will never use your images to help train AI models. Privacy First, Pixels Forever.”
EyeEm, the photo marketplace, changes hands as Freepik picks it up out of bankruptcy
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