Signal does use one small machine learning model which is actually part of our media editing suite of tools. It allows people to click a button to automatically makes faces unrecognizable in a photo; it runs locally on your phone. For example, if you take a photo of a party where you don’t know everyone, and you don’t have consent to share facial biometric data, you can click a button and this model will help you recognize faces and blur them so you can ensure privacy. That’s a nice and useful application of AI and it doesn’t send data to an app company.
What, then, is the problem with AI?
When AI systems are used, they are usually used for surveillance. They profile people’s faces and create data about whose face that is or what kind of person that face indicates. It’s used for ratings or for other purposes, which are surveillance in themselves. To create these AI systems, you first have to have huge amounts of data to train and inform those systems so they can be calibrated. The metastasis of AI as a kind of dominant and very hyped form of technology is antithetical to ensuring real privacy. It entrenches and expands the business model of surveillance, because its insatiable demand for data will naturally lead to more surveillance, more collection and generation of data."
