FYI, I asked Bard about how the Bambu Cloud worked and got this answer. I personally have nothing to hide from anyone, Chinese or not. But some may.
Yes, the data from the Bambu cloud service is sent to China. Bambu Lab is a Chinese company, and their cloud servers are located in China. This means that any data that you upload to the Bambu cloud service, such as your 3D print files, will be stored on servers in China.
Bambu Lab has a privacy policy that states that they may share your data with third-party partners, including those located in China. This means that your data could be accessed by the Chinese government.
If you are concerned about your privacy, you may want to consider using a different 3D printing software that does not store data in China. There are a number of open-source 3D printing software options available, such as Cura and Slic3r.
Here are some of the concerns about data being sent to China:
The Chinese government has a history of censoring and restricting access to information. This means that your data could be subject to censorship or surveillance if it is stored in China.
The Chinese government has a different set of privacy laws than the United States. This means that your data may not be protected to the same extent in China.
If there is a data breach, your data could be exposed to unauthorized individuals.
If you are concerned about your privacy, you should weigh the risks and benefits of using a 3D printing software that stores data in China before making a decision.
I’m not convinced that all of this is correct. The Bambu cloud is hosted on AWS in the US (at least it did when I last checked in my network), so if the data goes to China, that means they actively have some service running to copy all data from AWS to their own data storage in China. Absolutely possible, but the huge amounts of data would incur a fair bit of extra cost for data that is 99% completely uninteresting.
Bard has been outstanding for me with the answers I’ve been getting. But sometimes the info is so obscure there is no way to verify it. There’s probably no way to prove this other than a Bambu employee chiming in. It fits though with the anti Chinese tech mind set that has gripped the US.
I should add that Bard has been wrong at times. I would guess 90% of the time it has been right. I will remove this post if someone can reference a correction.
The big problem with Bard, ChatGPT and similar is that it doesn’t KNOW anything - it just puts together sentences that are similar to its training data, which comes from the whole web. Especially on technical issues, it tends to be wrong half the time, much like the Internet in general, based on studies I have read.
This is why I don’t have “privacy” worries about the Bambu cloud. I don’t see a risk because I’m not putting anything of value into it. What can they possibly find that would be worth the effort of sifting through all the data in hopes that they could recognize anything useful?
Bambu is welcome to waste their time searching out and studying the gcode I sent to my X1C for filament calibration, or that shelf bracket, or that cute bookmark with a pink cat on it. I hope they enjoy watching the video of my prints, maybe they can snuggle up with their honey and snack on a bowl of popcorn while they do it.
I seriously doubt that they have even considered actually retaining that information. Note that trouble tickets require sending a print log. If you tell Bambu that printer 3XY-39688 crashed the head into the bed on August 22 at 03:20UTC, they cannot (or will not) look up the print job to see what happened.
If you are working on a defense contract, or prototyping a world-changing gadget, use LAN mode and accept the limitations. Otherwise, realize you and your prints are not important enough for anyone to care about the information passing through the Bambu cloud.
Yeah same here. I thought maybe there might be some small business that would be worried about someone making off with their designs. No one in China is going to want that improved dog poop bag holder I designed.
Bard can be impressive at times. I was building a wall shelf for my wife the other day. It was a no name shelf from Amazon. I didn’t like some of the instructions so I asked Bard not figuring it would know. It either had already, or went and got the instructions for that exact shelf, read it, made sense of it and gave me a good answer. It surprised me with that one.
Using Bard as a source of information, and then posting it without mentioning the source is not a good idea. I inspected the traffic myself, and the cloud is hosted in the US on AWS servers. As I said, Bambu could of course run a service to copy your data to servers in China, but you claimed that their cloud was in China, which is false information.
My opinion, if anyone cares, I give it ■■■■. What do I send via the Cloud ? This is 3d printing, I am not sending anything valuable. How about the NSA, MI6 or others ? Anybody ever considered those companies and their aboilities to check your live 247/ ? No ? Are you paying with credit card ? I guess so, what happens with that information. You have a bank account ? Wonder who’s reading thie info there. This discussion is obscure.
I didn’t claim anything. That was just a quote from Bard. Which if it turns out to be true would be of interest to some people. Bard has not provided sources as far as I have seen. Get used to it. Bard and Chat GPT are going to be a regular thing in a lot of places.
Yes - from people who are fooled into thinking they are valid sources of information, not understanding what they’re really doing. There was that recent case of a lawyer who filed a court brief that ChatGPT wrote, citing nonexistent court cases in support of his claims. He never bothered to check if they were real.
Your post had no reservations whatsoever, and was written in a way that looked very much like a statement. You also claimed to have received this information from Bambu themselves, but as you have now edited your first post (and revealing that it was indeed from Bard, which is NOT a reliable source of information), there isn’t much point in discussing this any further.
As a matter of interest, I asked BARD “what about fake news” - this is the reply
quote
Fake news is false or misleading information presented as news. It often has the aim of damaging the reputation of a person or entity, or making money through advertising revenue. Fake news can be spread through social media, websites, and other online platforms.
There are many ways to identify fake news. Here are a few tips:
Check the source. Is the source a reputable news organization? If you’re not sure, try to find the same story on other websites.
Look for the date. Is the story recent? Old stories can be recycled and presented as new.
Check the facts. Can you verify the information in the story? If you’re not sure, try to find other sources that corroborate the story.
Beware of sensational headlines. Headlines that are too good to be true are often fake.
Don’t share without thinking. Before you share a story, take a few minutes to check it out. You don’t want to spread fake news.
Here are some other things you can do to help fight fake news:
Be critical of the information you see online. Don’t just believe everything you read.
Educate yourself about fake news. The more you know about it, the better equipped you’ll be to spot it.
Talk to your friends and family about fake news. Help them to be more discerning about the information they share.
Support organizations that are fighting fake news. There are many organizations that are working to combat the spread of fake news. You can support their work by donating money or volunteering your time.
Fake news is a serious problem, but it’s one that we can overcome. By being more critical of the information we see online and by supporting organizations that are fighting fake news, we can make the internet a more reliable source of information.
Wrong. I did not edit the first post. Maybe a typo but not the content. Only thing missing is the quotes for Bard. You’re twisting the facts to fit your misconception.
You guy take this stuff too serious. This is a forum about printers. It’s only a bunch of geeks in here.
Really, it’s not. Maybe in years past it would have been, but there are a LOT of “non-geek” people taking up 3D printing, and the Bambu line is especially appealing to them.
Re Bard or ChatGPT, remember that these parrot words they find online, with exactly the level of understanding that your printer (or a parrot) has: material passes through without comprehension or understanding.
Bard etc. cannot see, hear, touch. It has no mind, no thoughts, no awareness.
It may have canned output for certain queries.