Facebook is testing a new feature that requires users to have access to your entire gallery and photos you haven’t posted yet — officially, to offer you versions «improved by AI»; and possibly to collect data to train its artificial intelligence models.
Currently, when you add a new story to Facebook, the app will ask you to agree to «cloud processing of» photos to offer «creative suggestions from AI».
According to the report, if you click «Allow», Facebook will generate and suggest new ideas based on your gallery — such as collages, compilations, photo restyling, etc. However, for this to work, the app must upload media files from your photo library to its cloud (i.e., its servers) on a «consistent basis» based on data such as time, location, or topics. It is noted that only you will see the suggestions and the photos will not be used for advertising targeting.
At the same time, according to the analysis TechCrunch, by clicking «Allow» you agree to Meta’s Artificial Intelligence Terms of Service — that is, you allow the company’s AI to analyze your media files, facial features, and the like. This is a potential «slippery» way to get new data to train the technology and gain an edge in the AI race.
You can turn off the option in «Settings» Facebook under «Photo sharing suggestions»: there are two toggles where the first one allows you to suggest photos from the gallery while browsing the app, and the second one (which must be activated based on a pop-up asking for permission in stories) allows you to turn on or off «cloud processing».
«We’re exploring ways to make it easier for people to share content on Facebook by testing offerings of share-ready and curated content from a person’s photo gallery,» said Meta spokesperson Maria Kubeta, effectively confirming the feature’s testing.
However, Kubeta added that media files from users’ galleries can be used to improve the feature’s suggestions, but in the «test version of», they are not used to improve artificial intelligence models. I wonder what will happen when the feature is fully launched? Currently, it is offered to a limited number of users in the US and Canada.
The story is yet another example of how careful users should be when interacting with AI, as all your queries can easily become public at some point. In June, for example, the court ordered OpenAI to «indefinitely» store the history of requests to ChatGPT (including deleted chats) in order to have potential evidence in copyright infringement lawsuits and has already overturned two appeals from users.
Spelling error report
The following text will be sent to our editors: