iRobot Roomba
iRobot · Robot Vacuum
Staff Reviewed — a person at DeSpy reviewed this rating.
Index
Builds labeled floor plans and detects pets and people with confidence scores; development units famously photographed private interiors, including a woman on a toilet, with images later leaked online.
Why this rating
iRobot Roomba builds detailed labeled floor plans and pet/person detection, and a well-documented 2022 MIT Technology Review investigation found development-unit images — including a person on a toilet — leaked via an AI-training pipeline onto social media.
What it is
- Camera
- Requires a cloud account
- Works offline
- Manufacturer
- iRobot
- Category
- Robot Vacuum
- Model years
- 2015-present
- Market status
- Current
- Companion app
- iRobot Home
The evidence 1
Independent research, regulatory action, lawsuits and journalism about how this device handles personal data — the "what actually happens" axis. Each links to its source.
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Investigation revealing images captured by development Roomba units — including a woman on a toilet — leaked via an AI-training data pipeline (Scale AI contractors) onto social media.
Why it matters here: MIT Technology Review's investigation is specifically about leaked Roomba development-unit images.
Where your data goes
Third parties this device's data has flowed to, and on what basis. An ended tag means the flow has verifiably stopped — it stays listed for the record.
- Scale AI ended
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Descriptive, cited, not legal advice; ratings are versioned and corrections create a new version. Data from the IoT Info Grabber DB research project, CC BY-SA 4.0.