Artificial intelligence algorithms require large quantities of information. The methods used to obtain this data have raised issues about personal privacy, surveillance and copyright.

AI-powered gadgets and services, such as virtual assistants and IoT products, continuously collect individual details, raising issues about intrusive data gathering and unapproved gain access to by 3rd parties. The loss of privacy is further exacerbated by AI's capability to process and integrate huge quantities of information, possibly leading to a surveillance society where specific activities are constantly monitored and evaluated without adequate safeguards or openness.

Sensitive user information gathered may include online activity records, geolocation data, video, or audio. [204] For instance, in order to develop speech recognition algorithms, Amazon has actually taped millions of personal discussions and allowed temporary employees to listen to and transcribe some of them. [205] Opinions about this widespread surveillance range from those who see it as a needed evil to those for whom it is plainly unethical and a violation of the right to personal privacy. [206]
AI developers argue that this is the only way to deliver valuable applications and have established several methods that attempt to maintain privacy while still obtaining the data, such as data aggregation, de-identification and differential personal privacy. [207] Since 2016, some personal privacy professionals, such as Cynthia Dwork, have actually begun to view personal privacy in terms of fairness. Brian Christian composed that professionals have rotated "from the question of 'what they understand' to the concern of 'what they're finishing with it'." [208]
Generative AI is frequently trained on unlicensed copyrighted works, including in domains such as images or computer system code