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Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is facing renewed scrutiny over user privacy with the rollout of a new AI feature that requests access to users’ unpublished camera rolls for cloud processing.
The move has ignited a debate among privacy advocates and users, despite Meta’s claims that the images will not be used to train its generative AI models.
Some Facebook app users are encountering pop-up notifications asking for permission for Meta AI to access their camera rolls.
The company states this feature aims to restyle photos, group images by themes such as birthdays or graduations and generate personalized creative ideas like travel highlights and collages.
The notification assures users that Meta will periodically select media based on time, location, and theme, and explicitly states the data won’t be used for ad targeting.
However, privacy concerns are mounting due to the broad language in Meta’s AI Terms of Service, which users must accept to utilize the service.
These terms reserve the right to use personal information to improve AIs and related technology, leading to questions about the true scope of data utilization.
While Meta has denied using this specific data for AI model training in the current test, the ambiguity in its terms leaves open the possibility of future use.
A Meta spokesperson told Hyperallergic that the company is exploring ways to make content sharing easier and that these suggestions are opt-in only and can be turned off at any time.
They reiterated that camera roll media may be used to improve these suggestions, but are not used to improve AI models in this test.
The new feature is drawing parallels to Meta’s previous admissions of using public posts and text since 2007 to train its generative AI models.
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