Wearable makers train models on brain data without telling users
Science found that neurotech headband makers hold tens of millions of hours of users' brain wave recordings and face few limits on how they use them.
Summary
Makers of neurotech headbands have amassed tens of millions of hours of users' brain wave data and use it to train AI systems without telling them, an investigation by Science published on November 4 found.
The investigation found that the companies face few constraints in how they use the recordings. That puts a fast-growing pool of data drawn directly from people's brains largely outside the rules that govern other sensitive personal information.
Consumer headbands of this kind typically rely on electroencephalography, or EEG, which records the brain's electrical activity through sensors on the scalp. According to Science, the brain wave data gathered this way is being used to train AI models, and users of the devices are not told that their recordings serve that purpose.
A small number of US states have begun to treat brain data as a protected category. Colorado amended its privacy law in April 2024 to cover neural data, becoming the first state to do so, and California added neural data to its consumer privacy law in September 2024.