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

AI-powered devices and services, such as virtual assistants and IoT products, constantly collect individual details, raising issues about invasive data gathering and unapproved gain access to by third parties. The loss of personal privacy is additional exacerbated by AI's capability to process and integrate vast amounts of information, potentially leading to a monitoring society where private activities are continuously kept an eye on and analyzed without appropriate safeguards or transparency.

Sensitive user information gathered may include online activity records, geolocation data, video, or audio. [204] For example, in order to develop speech acknowledgment algorithms, Amazon has actually recorded countless private conversations and allowed temporary employees to listen to and transcribe some of them. [205] Opinions about this prevalent 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 provide valuable applications and have established several methods that try to maintain personal privacy while still obtaining the data, such as data aggregation, de-identification and differential privacy. [207] Since 2016, some privacy specialists, such as Cynthia Dwork, have started to view personal privacy in regards to fairness. Brian Christian wrote that specialists have rotated "from the concern of 'what they know' to the concern of 'what they're finishing with it'." [208]
Generative AI is often trained on unlicensed copyrighted works, including in domains such as images or computer system code