The Chinese company Anker, owner of the EUFY security camera brand, launched an initiative to collect packages of packages and cars with which to train its artificial intelligence systems. The proposal was simple: 2 dollars for each useful video. The campaign, which worked between December 2024 and February 2025, got more than 120 participants, according to public comments on the program page.
What Euphy asked. The company requested both real and staging videos of theft situations. On their website, Anker explained that they were looking for material that helped train their AI to better detect parcel thieves and people trying to open car doors. They even encouraged users to simulate the situation themselves: “You can create situations pretending to be a thief and donate those videos,” the company explained. If a user managed to record a simulated theft with two cameras simultaneously and added another car opening scene, he could earn up to 80 dollars.
The goal after the initiative. Eufy wanted to gather 20,000 videos of each type of robbery (packages and cars), adding more than 40,000 clips in total. Interested users only had to fill in a Google form where their videos uploaded and added their PayPal account to receive payment. The company assured that the data would be used exclusively to train its AI algorithms and for any other purpose.
Why generates debate. This strategy poses questions about privacy and security, although in this specific case it is more transparent than the usual practices of the sector. Unlike many companies that collect data without explicit consent or that trace the Internet to feed their models, Eufy made it clear what he asked, what he wanted and how much he would pay. The program was voluntary and the participants knew exactly what they accessed.
It is also true that Eufy’s history does not play in his favor. And in 2023, The Verge revealed that the transmissions of their cameras, advertised as extreme to extreme encryptions, were not when it was accessed through its web portal. Anker then admitted having cheated users and promised to solve him.
Rewards for training their AI. Currently, EuFy actively keeps a video donation program within its application with a different rewards system. Users can win digital medals, cameras or gift cards in exchange for videos that help improve AI. The app even shows a ranking with the users who have donated the most. The first of the ranking has contributed more than 201,000 clips. For this program, EuFy only requests videos with people and reiterates that the material will not be shared with third parties. He has also requested videos recorded with his vigilabés, although in this case no economic reward is mentioned.
Until security fails. Today there are many companies that are willing to reward their users as currency to obtain data that allow training their language models. However, although the company explicitly explains everything it needs and there is total transparency, the systems can fail. A recent example is Neon, a call app that offered money in exchange for recordings and transcripts, and that had to close after discovering a security failure that exposed the data of all its users.
Cover image | Alan J. Hendry
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