Pronto Sends Maids Wearing Cameras: Viral Instagram Video Asks How Safe Is It To Let Them Record Your Home

Pronto Sends Maids With Cameras Fitted For AI Training: A viral Instagram reel is asking a fair question. Pronto, the home services app, is sending cleaners into houses wearing AI cameras on their foreheads. The person who booked the services is asking how safe is it to allow a part-time cleaning executive recording your home and sharing data for AI training.

Pronto is a Bengaluru startup that sends cleaners, launderers and cooks to your door within 10 minutes. Under a service called “Pronto Verified,” some workers wear a small, visible camera that faces outward. It records the cleaning session.

Customers get the footage afterward. Pronto says it gives peace of mind, proof nothing was broken or stolen while you were away. But there’s a second

use for that footage. It also becomes training data for AI.

After a session, Pronto strips out faces and personal details from the video. Then it sells the footage to AI companies building “physical AI,” essentially robots meant to eventually do household chores themselves.

An internal investor memo, reported by Entrackr and Mint, said Pronto is “developing a data business leveraging its workforce to capture real-world household data for robotics labs.” The memo added that Pronto is already piloting this with “leading physical AI labs.”

Some customers who signed the consent form didn’t realise this second use existed, according to a report by Forbes. Pronto’s CEO, Anjali Sardana, says this covers a small slice of users, around 0.1 per cent of customers. She says it’s opt-in, and consent is asked for again before every booking, not just once.

The company also says footage is processed with privacy steps: faces are blurred, personal documents are removed, and the video is deleted within 48 hours.

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Is It Risky?

Critics point out one hard problem. Homes are difficult to fully anonymise. Blurring a face doesn’t hide a nameplate, an ID card lying on a table, or a bill with your address on it.

There’s also a labour angle. Workers wearing the cameras earn double pay for these bookings. One worker, Varsha Singh, told Forbes she actually feels safer with the camera on, since it protects her from false accusations. She also said she didn’t fully understand what AI training even meant when she started.

Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has taken note of the matter and is reviewing it, according to government sources cited by Moneycontrol. Pronto isn’t alone either. Rival Snabbit has confirmed a similar agreement with a robotics data startup called Human Archive, suggesting this practice may not be limited to one company. Rivals like Urban Company and Snabbit’s founders have publicly said they don’t do this and have no plans to.