Samsung is preparing a significant change to its Health app data policy, signaling that users will soon be asked to let the company use their personal health information to train artificial intelligence models. The update, which has already appeared for some Samsung Health users, marks a departure from the stricter privacy stance the platform maintained previously.
User data to be shared with AI systems and staff
According to the in-app notification, the data subject to this new use is broad and highly sensitive. It encompasses sleep analysis and cycle tracking, heart rate measurements, clinical diagnoses, prognoses, laboratory test results, treatment records, and medication information. Notably, the notice contains no indication that this information will be anonymized before it is processed by AI systems.
Beyond automated training, Samsung employees will also be granted access to the data in order to manually review the outputs of the AI models. That addition introduces a layer of human oversight, but it also further expands the circle of people who could potentially view intimate health details collected through smartphones and connected wearables such as the Galaxy Watch8.
An ultimatum for long-time Samsung Health users
The policy change presents a difficult choice for anyone who has relied on Samsung Health as a central repository for their wellness information. Users who do not consent to the new data-sharing terms will see all of their health data deleted from the application. That stands to affect years of accumulated records covering workouts, illness histories, and sleep patterns, data that often cannot be easily reconstructed.
Samsung has not yet responded to inquiries about whether it will offer a way to continue using Samsung Health’s core features without fully surrendering data privacy. The current framing of the notification suggests a single binary decision: agree to share deeply personal health information for AI training and human review, or lose access to it entirely.
Sources: samsunghealth.com, www.howtogeek.com, unsplash.com