Last week, Reuters published an interview with Irobot CEO Colin Angle, in which the Roomba-czar explained his plan to have his cleaning robots produce detailed maps of your house that the company would sell to Amazon and Google, something the company could do today, thanks to an exceptionally broad and one-sided terms of service that you "agree" to when you become an Irobot customer.
Now, Angle has given another interview to Zdnet in which he simply denies having said anything about this plan to Reuters, whom, he claims fell victim to a "misinterpretation" of his remarks.
Angle supports his claim by pointing out that Irobot products currently do not upload the requisite data to Irobot's servers. Such a feature would require an update to Irobot's software (something the company rolls out regularly). In 2015, Angle made a big announcement about his company's plans to incorporate a feature like this to his devices' software.
This was a misinterpretation. [Angle] never said that iRobot would look to sell customer maps or data to other companies. iRobot has not had any conversations with other companies about data transactions, and iRobot will not sell customer data.
Roomba is no spy: CEO says iRobot will never sell your data
[David Gewirtz/Zdnet]
(via /.)
(Image: Irobot)
