Ukraine to make drone videos available for training AI models

The Ukrainian military will make available millions of drone videos and other battlefield data to Ukrainian companies and the firms of its allies to help train artificial intelligence models, Ukraine’s minister of defense, Mykhailo Fedorov, said in a statement on Thursday.

Ukrainian drone videos have recorded attacks on soldiers, equipment such as vehicles and tanks and surveillance footage. These videos can be used to train AI models for automated targeting, according to experts on AI and warfare.

Allowing the use of genuine battlefield videos showing drones targeting people has raised ethical concerns. The International Committee of the Red Cross, which monitors rules of warfare, has opposed automated targeting systems without human oversight. Fedorov said the data would be made available because “we must outperform Russia in every technological cycle” and “artificial intelligence is one of the key arenas of this competition.”

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