- Snabbit and Urban Company reject in-home recordings citing customer privacy concerns
- Snabbit confirmed no homes have been recorded and abandoned AI data collection plans
- Urban Company CEO stated no current or future in-home recording activities are planned
Home services applications like Snabbit and Urban company have ruled out in-home recordings and use of artificial intelligence to data collection citing privacy concerns.
Snabbit stated that customer privacy remains "absolute" while thwarting plans of deploying in-home recording technology. The company re-assured that no customer homes have ever been recorded.
The statement comes in the backdrop of controversy surrounding its Bengaluru-based rival platform, Pronto, which allegedly recorded videos inside customers' homes to train AI systems.
However, Snabbit did admit to having explored the possibility of introducing physical AI-linked data collection, according to Entrackr reports.
Snabbit decided to walk away from a proposal by a startup called Human Archive after reviewing "preliminary draft concepts" and conducting “limited assessment” inside a controlled training-centre environment, the report highlighted.
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Urban Company on Sunday said it does not engage in any in-home recording activities and customer trust and privacy remain paramount for the company.
In a post shared on X, co-founder and CEO Abhiraj Bhal said Urban Company neither engages in recording inside customers' homes nor plans to do so in the future.
"In light of recent reports regarding recordings inside customers' homes by one of our competitors, many people have asked whether @urbancompany_UC engages in anything similar, or intends to do so in the future,” he wrote, adding, “The answer is clear and unequivocal: we do not," Bhal stated.
Pronto's Response
Pronto, in a post on X, clarified that the camera-based pilot was launched on customer opt-in basis, and customers were informed that professionals wear visible GoPro cameras during service.
The post added that cameras capture only hand movements during work and no audio is recorded by default, while faces, identifiable objects are blurred automatically.
The footage of the recordings gets deleted within 48 hours, to which customers get limited access. Further it added that the video footage will not be shared externally.
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