You go on a Tinder date and go home, but things are escalating. You don't really know or trust this guy, and he doesn't want to get an STD, so…what happens?
A company called Calmara asks men to take a picture of their penis and use AI to tell them whether their partner is “transparent.”
Let me just say right away that you shouldn't take a picture of someone's genitals and scan it with an AI tool to determine whether or not they should have sex.
Karmala's premise includes more red flags than a bad first date, but considering the vast majority of sexually transmitted diseases are asymptomatic, it only gets worse from there. So there's a good chance your partner has a sexually transmitted disease, but Karmala would say he's fine. Therefore, actual STD tests use blood and urine samples to detect infections, rather than visual inspection.
Other startups are also addressing the need for accessible STI testing in more responsible ways.
“In laboratory diagnostics, sensitivity and specificity are two important measures that help understand trends in missed infections and false-positive tests,” Daphne Chen, founder of TBD Health, told TechCrunch. . “There is always some degree of error, even with the most rigorous tests, but there is a reason test manufacturers like Roche openly publish their validation rates. can be interpreted accordingly.”
Karmala warns in the fine print that the results should not be used as a substitute for medical advice. But its marketing suggests otherwise. Before TechCrunch contacted Calmara, its website was titled “Calmara: Your Intimate Bestie for Unprotected Sex” (it has since been updated to say “Safer Sex” instead), and in a promotional video it described itself as “The Best website for hookups!”
Co-founder and CEO Mei-Ling Lu told TechCrunch that Calmara was not intended as a full-fledged medical tool. “Calmara is a lifestyle product and not a medical app. This framework does not include any medical conditions or discussions, and no physicians are involved in the current experience with Calmara. It is a free information service. ”
“We are currently updating our communications to better reflect our intentions,” Lu added. “The clear idea is to start a conversation about STI status and testing.”
Calmara is part of HeHealth, founded in 2019. Calmara and HeHealth use the same AI, which they say has an accuracy rate of 65-90%. HeHealth is designed as a first step in assessing your sexual health. The platform then helps users connect with partner clinics in their area and schedule appointments for actual comprehensive testing.
While HeHealth's approach is more reassuring than Calmara's, it sets a lower bar and still raises big data privacy red flags.
“It's good that they offer an anonymous mode where you don't have to link your photo to personally identifiable information,” Valentina Milanova, founder of tampon-based STI screening startup Daye, told TechCrunch. “However, this does not mean that their service is anonymized or anonymous, as your photo can still be traced to your email or IP address.”
HeHealth and Calmara also claim that because they use Amazon Web Services, they are compliant with HIPAA, a regulation that protects patient confidentiality. While this sounds reassuring, Calmara states in its privacy policy that it shares user information with “service providers and partners that help us operate our services, such as data hosting, analytics, marketing, payment processing, and security.” I am writing. It also doesn't specify whether these AI scans will be done on-device or in the cloud, and if so, how long that data will stay in the cloud and what it will be used for. This is a little too vague to reassure users that their intimate photos are safe.
These security questions are not only dangerous for users, but also for the company itself. What if a minor uses the website to test for sexually transmitted diseases? Karmala then ends up in possession of child sexual abuse material. Her Calmara's response to this ethical and legal responsibility is to write into the terms of service a ban on use by minors, but that defense has no legal weight.
Calmara represents the dangers of overhyped technology. This looks like a publicity stunt for HeHealth to capitalize on the excitement about his AI, but in actual implementation it just gives users a false sense of security about their sexual health. Those consequences are serious.
“Sexual health is a difficult area to innovate internally, but I can see where their intentions are noble,” Chen said. “I think they are bringing an inadequate solution to market too soon.”