The opt-in functionality will also provide Meta an opportunity to enhance its AI by utilizing your camera roll.
The opt-in functionality will also provide Meta an opportunity to enhance its AI by utilizing your camera roll.
Meta has introduced an opt-in AI capability for its Facebook users in the US and Canada that claims to enhance the shareability of their photos and videos. The only stipulation is that this feature focuses on your phone’s camera roll — not the media previously uploaded to Facebook. By opting in, Meta’s AI will sift through your camera roll, upload your unshared photos to Meta’s cloud, and unveil “hidden treasures” lost among screenshots, receipts, and various shots,” the company states. Users will have the option to save or share the recommended edits and collages.
If the notion of Facebook accessing your unpublished photos sounds familiar, it may be due to our previous piece on an early trial in June. During that period, the company asserted that unposted, private photos were not involved in training Meta’s AI, but did not exclude the possibility for the future.
Well, the future is here, and it appears that Meta aims to utilize your photos for AI training — with certain conditions. In a Friday announcement, Meta stated, “We don’t utilize media from your camera roll to enhance AI at Meta, unless you opt to edit this media with our AI tools or share.”
The Verge reached out to Meta for confirmation: Meta would use your camera roll to train its AI if you decide to make use of this feature, correct? Additionally, we sought to clarify when Meta begins employing your unpublished photos to enhance its AI. Does this occur upon opting into the feature? After you decide to edit something using the tool? Or solely after sharing the final result?
A spokesperson for Meta, Mari Melguizo, responded with the following clarification: “This means the media from the camera roll uploaded by this feature for suggestions will not be used to enhance AI at Meta. Only if you modify the suggestions with our AI tools or publish those suggestions to Facebook might improvements to AI at Meta occur.”
Thus, Meta will gather and store your photos in the cloud, and their AI will have access to them, but the organization will not use them for training their AI unless you take an extra step — at least for now, as per Meta. Currently, the feature claims it will “select media from your camera roll and continuously upload it to our cloud”; in June, Meta informed us that it might retain some of that information for more than 30 days. The company assures that your media “won’t be used for advertisement targeting.”
Last year, Meta admitted that it had previously used its AI models for all public media and content shared on Facebook and Instagram by adult users since 2007.
Facebook’s blog today indicates that users will be prompted to decide if they wish to “permit cloud processing to generate creative concepts derived from your camera roll.” It remains uncertain if that notification will also inform users that the feature might train Meta’s AI using their photos. The company states that this feature is aimed at assisting users who love taking pictures but wish to enhance their images before posting or those who lack the time to “create something special.” Facebook plans to introduce the feature in the upcoming months.
