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

AI-powered gadgets and services, such as virtual assistants and IoT items, constantly collect individual details, raising concerns about intrusive information gathering and unauthorized gain access to by 3rd parties. The loss of personal privacy is further worsened by AI's ability to process and integrate vast amounts of information, possibly resulting in a security society where private activities are continuously kept track of and analyzed without appropriate safeguards or openness.

Sensitive user data gathered may consist of online activity records, geolocation data, video, or audio. [204] For example, in order to develop speech recognition algorithms, Amazon has recorded countless personal conversations and enabled temporary employees to listen to and transcribe a few of them. [205] Opinions about this widespread surveillance variety from those who see it as a required evil to those for whom it is plainly unethical and an offense of the right to privacy. [206]
AI developers argue that this is the only way to deliver valuable applications and have established several techniques that try to maintain personal privacy while still obtaining the information, such as information aggregation, de-identification and differential personal privacy. [207] Since 2016, some privacy professionals, such as Cynthia Dwork, have actually started to see personal privacy in terms of fairness. Brian Christian wrote that specialists have rotated "from the question of 'what they understand' to the concern of 'what they're making with it'." [208]
Generative AI is often trained on unlicensed copyrighted works, including in domains such as images or computer code