Chinese electronics maker Anker, the company behind Eufy security cameras, earlier this year launched a controversial campaign offering users $2 per video of package or car thefts — including staged ones — to train its artificial intelligence systems. The company said the goal was to help its AI better recognize theft events, encouraging users to “pretend to be a thief” to generate training data. Participants were asked to submit videos through a Google Form along with their PayPal details for payment.
The campaign, which ran from December 18, 2024, to February 25, 2025, aimed to collect 20,000 videos each of package thefts and car-door pulling incidents. According to user comments on Eufy’s announcement page, more than 120 people participated in the initiative. However, Eufy declined to disclose how many videos were ultimately collected, how much money was paid out, or whether the data was deleted after training. The company stated that collected videos were used “solely for training AI algorithms.”
Following that effort, Eufy launched additional “Video Donation Programs”, offering users in-app rewards such as badges, gift cards, or cameras for sharing more footage — this time focusing on videos featuring humans. The Eufy app now features an “Honor Wall”, ranking users by the number of videos donated, with the current leader contributing over 201,000 videos. The company also invites users to submit footage from baby monitors, though without offering monetary incentives.
The initiative has reignited privacy and security concerns surrounding Eufy. In 2023, The Verge exposed that the company had falsely claimed its security footage was end-to-end encrypted, when in fact it was accessible in unencrypted form through a web portal. Although Anker later admitted to misleading users and pledged to fix the issue, the latest campaigns suggest ongoing tension between AI innovation and user privacy protections