Samsung Health offers a choice of AI data or in-app restrictions

medical data

Samsung Health users are faced with the need to confirm a new consent for the use of personal data. Samsung has started implementing the “Consent to Use Medical Data for AI Training and Modeling” notice. The company openly states that the collected information will be used to train neural networks, with “human review” of the data in certain scenarios.

What data does the company collect

It is about sensitive information about the user’s health. This list includes: activity, medical records, medication history, and menstrual cycle information. Such actions are aimed at the development of intellectual reporting functions, analysis of the state of health and implementation of recommendation algorithms.

Consequences of refusal to participate

Samsung has introduced a new switch in the privacy settings. If the user refuses to provide their data for AI training, there are serious limitations: synchronization with Samsung Account becomes unavailable. Moreover, in the absence of consent, the application may delete the accumulated information, unless otherwise provided by applicable law.

Why Samsung is implementing AI

The company argues for data collection by the need to improve health analytics algorithms. The large-scale June update has already added the function of creating personal training plans, analyzing sleep quality and evaluating nutrition based on neural networks.

Start date

New functions of AI analytics will first of all become available to owners of the new Galaxy Watch 9 smart watch, the presentation of which is scheduled at the Samsung Unpacked event on July 22. In the future, Samsung plans to roll out these capabilities to previous device models.

At the moment, the issue of anonymization remains open: Samsung officially declares that it combines data to avoid identifying individuals, but it is not entirely clear whether there is a possibility of linking medical indicators to a specific account.