Facebook is starting to feed its AI with private, unpublished photos
Always read the terms and conditions, folks:
For years, Meta trained its AI programs using the billions of public images uploaded by users onto Facebook and Instagram's servers. Now, it's also hoping to access the billions of images that users haven't uploaded to those servers. Meta tells The Verge that it's not currently training its AI models on those photos, but it would not answer our questions about whether it might do so in future, or what rights it will hold over your camera roll images.
On Friday, TechCrunch reported that Facebook users trying to post something on the Story feature have encountered pop-up messages asking if they'd like to opt into "cloud processing", which would allow Facebook to "select media from your camera roll and upload it to our cloud on a regular basis", to generate "ideas like collages, recaps, AI restyling or themes like birthdays or graduations."
By allowing this feature, the message continues, users are agreeing to Meta AI terms, which allows their AI to analyze "media and facial features" of those unpublished photos, as well as the date said photos were taken, and the presence of other people or objects in them. You further grant Meta the right to "retain and use" that personal information.
Meta's public stance is that the feature is "very early," innocuous and entirely opt-in: "We're exploring ways to make content sharing easier for people on Facebook by testing suggestions of ready-to-share and curated content from a person's camera roll. These suggestions are opt-in only and only shown to you – unless you decide to share them – and can be turned off at any time. Camera roll media may be used to improve these suggestions, but are not used to improve AI models in this test," reads a statement from Meta comms manager Maria Cubeta.
[...] And while Daniels and Cubeta tell The Verge that opting in only gives Meta permission to retrieve 30 days worth of your unpublished camera roll at a time, it appears that Meta is retaining some data longer than that. "Camera roll suggestions based on themes, such as pets, weddings and graduations, may include media that is older than 30 days," Meta writes.
Thankfully, Facebook users do have an option to turn off camera roll cloud processing in their settings, which, once activated, will also start removing unpublished photos from the cloud after 30 days.
Facebook is asking to use Meta AI on photos in your camera roll you haven't yet shared:
Facebook is asking users for access to their phone's camera roll to automatically suggest AI-edited versions of their photos — including ones that haven't been uploaded to Facebook yet.
The feature is being suggested to Facebook users when they're creating a new Story on the social networking app. Here, a screen pops up and asks if the user will opt into "cloud processing" to allow creative suggestions.
As the pop-up message explains, by clicking "Allow," you'll let Facebook generate new ideas from your camera roll, like collages, recaps, AI restylings, or photo themes. To work, Facebook says it will upload media from your camera roll to its cloud (meaning its servers) on an "ongoing basis," based on information like time, location, or themes.
[...] The creative tool is another example of the slippery slope that comes with sharing our personal media with AI providers. Like other tech giants, Meta has grand AI ambitions. Being able to tap into the personal photos users haven't yet shared on Facebook's social network could give the company an advantage in the AI race.
Unfortunately for end users, in tech companies' rush to stay ahead, it's not always clear what they're agreeing to when features like this appear.
[...] So far, there hasn't been much backlash about this feature. A handful of Facebook users have stumbled across the AI-generated photo suggestions when creating a new story and raised questions about it. For instance, one user on Reddit found that Facebook had pulled up an old photo (in this case, one that had previously been shared to the social network) and automatically turned it into an anime using Meta AI.
When another user in an anti-AI Facebook group asked for help shutting this feature off, the search led to a section called camera roll sharing suggestions in the app's Settings.
[...] Reached for comment, Meta spokesperson Maria Cubeta confirmed the feature is a test, saying, "We're exploring ways to make content sharing easier for people on Facebook by testing suggestions of ready-to-share and curated content from a person's camera roll."
"These suggestions are opt-in only and only shown to you – unless you decide to share them – and can be turned off at any time," she continued. "Camera roll media may be used to improve these suggestions, but are not used to improve AI models in this test."
The company is currently testing suggestions in the U.S. and Canada.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Tuesday July 01, @01:32PM
Note this is likely illegal in Europe - insofar as photos contain uniquely identifiable information, and some people in photos have not signed off GDPR for Meta to process their data.
Of course, we know that Meta don't care about GDPR (hence WhatsApp getting kicked by GDPR).
(Score: 5, Insightful) by pkrasimirov on Tuesday July 01, @01:41PM (6 children)
"Privacy" and "Meta" are mutually exclusive. "Meta" exists only by intruding into "privacy" and selling what info they got away with. If anyone has illusions of privacy when using "Meta", especially because "Meta" said so, I have a nice bridge to sell too.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 01, @01:44PM
"Meta" is a 4-letter word, like "dumb" and "fuck".
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Tork on Tuesday July 01, @03:37PM (2 children)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Tuesday July 01, @11:15PM
You were modded funny but I changed you to insightful because I think all FB folks should do this.
Of course I'm against DEI. Donald, Eric, and Ivanka.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday July 02, @02:58PM
Better yet, take to wearing a 6th finger prosthetic!
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by corey on Wednesday July 02, @12:10AM (1 child)
Add to that the normal online provider condition of anything you upload is suddenly owned by the provider. So Meta is just doing what it wants with that content. I’m not surprised in the least. I expected this at some stage. That’s why I jumped off the platform in about 2012, and ask family members to not upload any photos of my kids to it. Which they sometimes ignore.
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Thursday July 03, @06:25AM
> ask family members to not upload any photos of my kids to it. Which they sometimes ignore.
I have a problem with the kindergarten of my child with this. Explicitly told them no photos, they still upload photos of group events and are proud of it. I can disagree to EULAs all day, the others will still do crap. You can argue I can think of legal action but the info is already there.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 01, @02:29PM (3 children)
"They just hired everybody who could breathe."
https://futurism.com/scale-ai-zuckerberg-incompetence [futurism.com]
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 01, @07:13PM
This reminds me of the spectacular failures of the dotcom era, both I completeness and scale. Hopefully we're near the end of this bubble. The crime revelations are typical late stage bubble.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday July 01, @07:14PM (1 child)
Is that website a joke?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 01, @07:28PM
I would expect that the truth lies somewhere inbetween the presented extremes:
Even the notion that they're "detecting and removing" spam instead of preventing its introduction in a more bottom-up approach (like: not hiring spammers) is a red flag.
The whole notion behind "design controls" which has been driving global quality systems for the past 30 years is that you can't "test in" quality after the product is built. If you're not getting 99.999% acceptable product first pass through production, your process needs improvement.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday July 01, @04:30PM
This is bad news for the stock price going forward. The humans are leaving the platform leaving behind ever more bots, ruining the human:bot ratio, so in panic "throw some AI at it" that literally nobody wants. It's a desperation strategy. Dying platforms always shovel AI slop on the downslope. See "Quickbooks" vs "Wave accounting" for another example.