AI Systems Can Recover Deleted Data, Study Warns
A study by researchers at Spanish universities found that AI systems can recover data that users believe has been deleted, potentially undermining the right to be forgotten guaranteed under EU law. The research identified risks in technologies like temporal databases, blockchain, and machine learning systems where fragmented data copies can be reconstructed by algorithms.
What happened
Researchers from the Universidad de La Rioja and Universidad de Zaragoza published a study in ACM Computing Surveys examining data deletion in AI systems. The study found that AI systems can recover data that users believed had been deleted, distinguishing between recoverable and non-recoverable deletion.
Reported impact
The recovery capability poses risks to the right to be forgotten, a principle established under European Union law. Residual copies and fragmented information in technologies like temporal databases, blockchain, and machine learning systems can be reconstructed by advanced algorithms, potentially violating the original intent of data deletion requests.
Index analysis
The study highlights that data deletion is not always irreversible, particularly in complex technological environments where backup systems and distributed computing create fragmented copies of information that AI algorithms can identify and reconstruct.
Classification
Sources and evidence
Sources not yet published
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