Meta's AI Ambitions Prompt Facebook Feature Backlash
As tech companies seek more and more material on which to train their proprietary AI software, we’re witnessing some occasionally surreal juxtapositions — such as the 2024 news that Meta considered buying publisher Simon & Schuster as a means of training their AI. Now, Meta is facing a backlash for a more moderate foray into ingesting data — one that may involve a new Facebook feature.
Techcrunch’s Sarah Perez has more details on the feature — and the controversy. Perez reports that some Facebook users are being prompted to enable a “cloud processing” feature that would give Facebook access to their phone’s camera roll, selecting and uploading certain photos to Meta’s cloud storage periodically. Where things get more complicated comes with one of the conditions to enable this: accepting the terms and conditions of Meta AI.
There are a few passages in the Meta AI Terms that don’t coexist terribly well with this kind of broad access to every photo on your camera. That includes one geographic restriction that seems challenging to enforce: “You further agree that you will not upload images to Meta AI that you know to contain individuals that reside in Illinois or Texas, unless you are their legally authorized representative and consent on their behalf.”
There’s also the warning that “Meta may share certain information about you that is processed when using the AIs with third parties who help us provide you with more relevant or useful responses.” Again, it’s one thing to have Meta’s AI reviewing photos that you’ve consciously uploaded to Facebook or Instagram; it’s another to allow it much more access.
Perez noted that there’s been some backlash to this feature, though users on several platforms — including Facebook, Reddit and Mastodon — have expressed criticism or confusion over it.
Writing at The Verge, Tina Nguyen contacted Facebook to learn about what they do and don’t have planned for these images. As Nguyen writes, Facebook stated that the company wasn’t currently training its AI on images uploaded via this feature. However, Meta “would not answer our questions about whether it might do so in future, or what rights it will hold over your camera roll images,” Nguyen wrote.
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