Meta has made available to its Facebook users in the US and Canada an optional artificial intelligence feature that claims to make their photos and videos more “share-worthy”. The only catch is that this feature is for your phone’s camera roll – NO media you’ve already uploaded to Facebook. If you agree, Meta’s AI will search your camera roll and upload it your unpublished photos to the Meta cloud and discover “hidden gems” that “get lost among screenshots, receipts and random photos,” the company says. Users will be able to save or share suggested edits and collages.
If Facebook wanting to see your unpublished photos sounds familiar, it may be because we reported on an early test back in June. At the time, the company said the unpublished, private photos were not used to train Meta’s artificial intelligence, but wouldn’t rule out doing so in the future.
Well, the future is now, and it looks like Meta wants to train its AI on your photos – under certain conditions. In Friday announcement about this feature, Meta says: “We don’t use media from your camera roll to improve the AI in Meta unless you choose to edit that media with our AI tools or share it.”
Edge asked Meta to confirm: Meta will be utilize your camera roll to train the AI if you decide to utilize this feature, right? We also asked for explanations regarding When The meta starts using your unpublished photos to train its artificial intelligence. Does this happen after enabling a novel feature? After you decide to edit something with this tool? Or only after you decide to share the created creation?
Meta spokeswoman Mari Melguizo sent us the following explanation: “This means that camera media uploaded using this feature to make suggestions will not be used to improve the AI in Meta. Only if you modify the suggestions using our AI tools or post those suggestions on Facebook can AI improvements in Meta be made.”
So Meta will collect and store your photos in the cloud, and Meta’s AI will be able to view them, but the company won’t utilize them to train its AI unless you take additional steps — at least for now, according to Meta. Currently, the feature says it will “select media from your camera roll and upload it to our cloud on the fly”; in June, Meta informed us that it may retain some data for longer than 30 days. The company says your media “will not be used for ad targeting.”
Last year, Meta admitted that since 2007 it had quietly trained its artificial intelligence models on all public photos and texts posted on Facebook and Instagram by adult users.
According to Facebook’s blog today, users will be asked if they want to “allow cloud computing to get creative ideas from your camera roll.” It’s not yet clear whether this prompt will also warn users that this feature may be training Meta’s AI on your photos. The company says this feature is intended to assist users who enjoy taking photos but want to improve their photos before posting or who don’t have time to “create something special.” Facebook says it will roll out the feature in the coming months.