Ukraine Opens Battlefield Video Archive to Allies to Train AI Weapons

Ukraine's Defense Ministry is opening Avengers Labs, an archive of battlefield footage used to train its AI weapons, to defense companies in allied countries free of charge. The New York Times reported on Thursday, November 12, that the only agreement so far is with Britain, where up to 12 companies are first in line, while Kyiv is talking to other governments. The matter is timely because a UN review conference in Geneva is due to decide next week whether to open negotiations on lethal autonomous weapons.

Payment in software

Companies pay with software: any firm that trains a model on the archive must license the result to the Ukrainian military. According to the ministry, the archive holds more than five million annotated frames, most from unmanned systems via the Delta battlefield system. The Times describes more than five million drone surveillance and strike videos. The ministry says more than 30 Ukrainian companies train models on the platform, and three resulting products are in combat use.

How the training works

Companies cannot view or download the footage, which is stored encrypted with a cloud service outside Ukraine. They run models against it in an isolated system, and a model that scores well on false positives and false negatives is loaded onto an aerial drone, ground robot or sea drone. One executive said anonymously that training showed false positives below 5 percent, a figure that cannot be verified. The ministry says the data is anonymized and delayed, and foreign firms get access only after export control procedures are completed.

Human rights concerns

The licence has no human rights clause. Ukrainian officials say each receiving government must ensure its military follows the Geneva Conventions. Anna Bacciarelli of Human Rights Watch told the Times that the "black box obscures accountability" when a weapon picks its own target. Oleksandra Matviichuk, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who directs the Center for Civil Liberties in Kyiv, urged caution about sharing the data with countries that have not accepted the Rome Statute principle on war crimes, and named the United States.

The Convention on Conventional Weapons Review Conference meets in Geneva from November 16 to 20 and will decide whether to open negotiations on binding rules.