TL;DR
Commuters at Glasgow Central have been told, by posters on the platforms, that drones and CCTV are operating overhead and that the footage could feed AI training. The drones are run by SkyBound, a Southampton company working with Network Rail. Both say the footage is anonymised and mostly used for incident response and inspections. The episode shows how AI training notices are starting to appear in public spaces, and how little a poster tells the people walking past it.
What the drones are doing
Network Rail and SkyBound told The National that Glasgow Central is the only Scottish station where SkyBound currently flies. The main job is operational: giving railway staff an overhead view of crowds, the condition of the track and any debris, so they can deal with incidents and inspect infrastructure faster. SkyBound handles the flying and safety; railway teams decide how to respond.
The footage has a second use. Through a beta programme called Synthesiser, SkyBound is combining data gathered around the Commonwealth Games to study how crowds form and thin out, how passengers travel between stations and venues, and where bottlenecks appear. The company says the aim is better planning for future events.
SkyBound says its system “relies on anonymised footage and strict data protections”. Network Rail said anonymised footage is sometimes used to improve incident response and operations, and that any use stays within privacy and data protection law. Chief executive Gemma Alcock has said the company is rolling out automated drone stations around the UK.
Why it matters
As The National quotes them, the posters read: “drones and CCTV are in use. Footage may be used to train AI models”, with a QR code pointing to SkyBound. Neither company’s statement explains what anonymisation involves, which models are trained, or how long footage is kept. That is the gap the ICO’s chief executive highlighted this month when he argued that privacy notices in physical spaces depend on things people can see. A sign at a busy station is a notice, but it is not an explanation, and it gives passengers no obvious way to object.
Looking forward
As drone stations spread across the rail network, similar notices are likely to appear at other hubs. Operators and their suppliers will need to explain clearly what “may be used to train AI models” means in practice, including how anonymisation is tested and who owns the resulting models. For businesses running CCTV in shared spaces, the Glasgow case is a reminder that adding AI training to an existing surveillance purpose is a change people notice.