Amazon soon to face EU investigation over iRobot takeover? However, nothing is official yet.
US politicians may not be the only ones worried about the proposed takeover of iRobot by Amazon. European Union regulators are informally questioning Amazon ahead of a “possible”official investigation, according to The Financial Times sources. The European Commission sent the US giant a questionnaire regarding potential privacy issues, including the ability of Roomba robot vacuums to take photos. According to one source, officials are concerned that Amazon might combine these images with Alexa data to gain a “competitive edge.”
Amazon soon to face EU investigation over iRobot takeover?
The MIT Technology Review recently discovered that photos taken of development versions of the Roomba J7 robot vacuums were circulating on private Discord and Facebook groups. At the time, iRobot said the technology had not been implemented in production models, was clearly labeled to testers, and displayed a warning to remove “sensitive”data from the robot’s view. These results have led iRobot to end its partnership with Scale AI, a startup that relies on contractors to label data for AI training. It turned out that these images were leaked by employees who worked on this project.
Amazon may try to head off an official investigation by reminding that Roombas only has a rudimentary home mapping system and that this should not raise user privacy concerns. In response to this question, the European Commission simply stated that it had not been “officially informed”of Amazon’s planned acquisition of iRobot. For its part, in a press release for Engadget, Amazon said it was “working in collaboration”with regulators.
However, nothing is official yet.
If there had been an official investigation, it would not have started for several weeks. However, Amazon may want to be proactive. The European Union may launch an investigation into the situation, but will then initiate a deeper “phase 2″investigation if Amazon does not allay their concerns.
The potential new investigation comes as the European Union has pledged to be tough on big tech companies like Amazon when investigating potential privacy breaches. Civil liberties advocates accused the EU of being too weak and too slow in dealing with such cases. The iRobot takeover investigation will not be directly related to this increase in operations, but will reinforce the idea that user privacy is a critical aspect of today’s regulators.