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Eufy Paid $2 Per Video for Staged Theft Clips to Train Its AI

Reporters say the company has not explained how it handled the program despite prior scrutiny of its camera security.

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A promotional photo of a Eufy security camera and its accompanying app. (Image: Eufy)

Overview

  • The paid campaign ran from December 18, 2024 to February 25, 2025 with stated goals of collecting 20,000 package-theft videos and 20,000 car-door pulling videos via a Google Form with PayPal for payments.
  • Eufy explicitly invited both real and staged incidents, telling users they could pretend to be a thief and submit those clips for $2 each.
  • User activity signals include more than 120 comments from people saying they participated and an in-app Honor Wall showing a top contributor with 201,531 donated events.
  • After the paid drive, Eufy continued an in-app Video Donation Program offering badges, gift cards, or cameras and asked for baby monitor footage without mentioning monetary rewards.
  • The app states donated videos are used only to train and improve AI and are not shared with third parties, but Eufy did not answer TechCrunch’s questions on participation, payments, dataset size, or deletion, following a 2023 admission that it misled users about encryption.