Parents selling videos of their kids for $50 in Google-backed study

Google is paying to collect video footage of 13- to 17-year-old children and studying their skin tones and eyelid shapes, according to a Thursday report from 404 Media.

The outlet cited a “Facial Video Data Collection Project” web page run by Canadian tech corporation Telus International, which offered parents $50 for short videos of their children that would then go to Telus’ customer, Google. The page, which was up on Wednesday but now says “Form Closed,” said the project was expected to run from November 2023 to January 2024 and that the data collected could be used to improve Google’s facial recognition technology.

“Participants will be asked to take 11 short videos of themselves, while wearing different props (e.g., sun glasses, face masks, hats) or without any props,” the project’s summary said. “Each video will be less than 40 seconds long.” A Telus moderator would be on a call while the child took these videos, according to the page.

To participate, parents had to consent to Google and Telus collecting their child’s personal and biometric information, including the shape of their eyelids, the color of their skin and their “facial geometry,” the webpage said. Google would then keep the data for five years at most, per the web page — potentially well into a participant’s early adulthood.

A section of the page outlined the reasoning behind the project: “To obtain data for training a machine learning model” for Google products. A machine-learning model can make calculations, predictions or new content, based on the data it’s been trained with. In this case, images of children’s faces could be used to teach Google software how to better identify people’s races or ages, or even verify their identities.

Google did not immediately respond to SFGATE’s request for comment, but confirmed to 404 Media that the company is “exploring ways to help our users verify their age,” and that contractors like Telus help it build more diverse datasets. Telus spokesperson Amber Rubin, in an email to SFGATE, declined to provide details “for competitive and confidentiality reasons”; the corporation, along with running data collection studies, has a large telecommunications division.

The Telus project for Google was limited to children and open for remote participants, but another Telus web page from late last year offered $80 to adults able to come in person to Santa Clara County, where Google and other tech giants are headquartered. Again, participants needed to allow collection of their eyelid shapes and skin colors, but this time, the name of the tech customer wasn’t disclosed.

Hear of anything happening at Google or another tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at [email protected] or on Signal at 628-204-5452.