Facebook and its parent company Meta have often been embroiled in controversy over privacy. There were recent reports that the company was using photos shared publicly on Facebook and Instagram to train its artificial intelligence (AI) models. But the latest reports are even more shocking. Now, Facebook is reportedly seeking access to your phone’s camera roll, including photos you never share on social media.
Reports say that this is a TechCrunch report, citing The Verge. Recently, some Facebook users received a new pop-up notification when trying to upload a story. This notification gave them the option to opt in to a new feature called Cloud Processing. This feature will regularly upload photos from your camera roll to Meta’s cloud. This will give users creative ideas like photo collages, event recaps, AI-generated filters, and theme-based suggestions like birthdays/graduations, etc.
At first glance, this seems reasonable and safe. But there’s a big risk lurking behind it. If you opt in to this feature, you’re inadvertently giving Meta permission to scan and analyze your personal, unshared photos. This means that Meta’s AI will constantly analyze metadata, including the faces that appear in your photos, the objects in the frame, the date and location they were taken, and even the photos themselves.
Meanwhile, Meta argues that this feature is to improve the user experience and that it’s an “opt-in” feature that you can turn on or off at will. That means users can disable it whenever they want. While that may be reasonable, given Facebook’s history with user data, some users, especially privacy advocates, may be concerned.
Meta recently admitted that it has been using all photos posted publicly on Facebook and Instagram since 2007 to train its generative AI. But Meta has never clarified what it means by ‘public’ or what the age limit for ‘adult’ is. This is causing further concern. Moreover, it is not clear whether its updated AI terms, which will be effective from June 23, 2024, exclude these cloud-processed, unpublished photos from being used as training feeds. The Verge reports that Meta has said that it does not currently use unpublished, i.e. unshared photos for AI training.
But it is interesting to note that it has not said that it will not do so in the future. Meanwhile, if you want to avoid this cloud processing, you can go to Facebook’s settings and turn off this feature. Meta says that if you turn this feature off, all your unshared photos will be deleted immediately for 30 days. In this AI era, tech companies are constantly experimenting with how much data they can collect from users and how much they can use it. Interestingly, this new feature from Meta, while pretending to help users, is creating a way to access their personal data.
Sharing photos used to be a conscious decision. But now those same photos can be silently uploaded to the cloud. And the eyes of Meta AI can monitor them. In such a situation, it is very important for users to properly understand this feature and its terms and make their own privacy decisions.
Also Read: If a Credit Card Holder Dies, Who Pays the Bill? Know the Law
Share
Ananya Nagalla Stuns with Her Latest Glamorous Look
Samantha June's Photo Dump With Keerthy Suresh Wins Hearts
