Facebook’s AI Can Now See Photos You Haven’t Shared
▼ Summary
– Meta has launched an opt-in AI feature for US and Canadian Facebook users that analyzes their camera roll to suggest “shareworthy” photos and videos.
– The feature uploads unpublished photos to Meta’s cloud to identify and recommend edits or collages from users’ camera rolls.
– Meta states it will not use camera roll media to train its AI unless users edit the suggestions with AI tools or share them on Facebook.
– The company has previously trained its AI on public photos and text from Facebook and Instagram since 2007 but claims this feature won’t target ads.
– Users will be prompted to allow cloud processing for creative ideas, with the feature rolling out in the coming months and unclear warnings about AI training implications.
A new feature from Meta is now available to Facebook users in the United States and Canada, offering to transform personal photos and videos into more polished, shareable content. This artificial intelligence tool, which users must actively choose to enable, scans the images stored in your smartphone’s camera roll, not just those already shared on the platform. According to the company, the AI combs through your unpublished photos, uploads them to Meta’s cloud servers, and identifies what it calls “hidden gems” that might otherwise remain buried among screenshots and other casual pictures. Users can then save or share the AI-generated edits and collages.
This initiative may sound familiar, as Meta conducted an early test of a similar capability back in June. At that time, the company stated that private, unposted photos were not being utilized to train its AI models, though it did not commit to ruling out that possibility for the future.
That future appears to have arrived. In the recent announcement, Meta clarified its current policy: the company does not use media from your camera roll to enhance its AI systems unless you decide to edit that media using its AI tools or share the results. When pressed for details, a Meta spokesperson explained that simply uploading photos through the feature will not result in their use for AI training. Only if you actively edit a suggestion with AI tools or publish it to Facebook would improvements to Meta’s AI potentially be made.
So, while Meta will collect and store your photos in the cloud, and its AI will analyze them to provide suggestions, the company asserts it will not use them to train its AI unless you take that extra step, at least for the time being. The feature operates by continuously selecting media from your camera roll and uploading it to the cloud. In previous communications, Meta indicated it might retain some of this data for longer than 30 days, though it reassures users that the media will not be used for advertising purposes.
Meta has previously confirmed that it trained its AI models using all public photos and text shared by adult users on Facebook and Instagram dating back to 2007.
The new tool prompts users to “allow cloud processing to get creative ideas made for you from your camera roll.” It remains unclear whether this prompt will explicitly inform users that utilizing the AI editing tools could lead to their photos being used for AI training. The feature is intended for individuals who take many photos but want assistance in enhancing them or lack the time to create something distinctive. Facebook plans to introduce this functionality over the next few months.
(Source: The Verge)
