There’s good news and bad news: The bad news is that Meta’s continued development of generative AI has led it to add a privacy nightmare setting to its Facebook app. The good news is that, in a big departure from Meta’s status quo, you have control over whether you participate.
It’s all about whether the company and its AI get access to your camera roll and all the pictures there, even the ones you haven’t posted anywhere.
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has been trying to keep up with AI heavyweights for the past few years in an ultracompetitive race to make the most advanced AI models. Meta distinguished itself by adding its AI to its social media apps, including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. Nowadays, most of us who use those apps have to interact with Meta AI, even if we don’t want to.
The company also uses the social media posts that its adult users publicly share to train its AI. There is no way to opt out of training, although European users can object to their data being used thanks to more stringent privacy laws protecting them. For those of us who are concerned about AI systems eating up the content we share online, it’s been a nonstop headache.
So it’s not totally surprising to see this feature on Facebook. It’s called camera roll cloud processing, and Facebook says it’s a way to get more creative help when you share photos and videos. It pulls from your newer pictures, from the last 30 days or so, and recommends the best options, makes AI edits or entirely reimagines your photos with AI. It can also pull from your older photos for themed compilations like travel highlights, monthly recaps and birthday and special event content. You also get more ways to sort your photos and videos by topic and suggestions from Meta about the best photos to share.
Before you opt in, you need to understand the privacy implications.
Meta’s AI terms and how to access camera roll cloud processing
When you allow camera roll cloud processing, Meta can «automatically upload your photos and videos to our cloud so that we can create personalized creative ideas for you.» This is not the same as allowing Meta access to your camera roll so you can post photos and videos you took. If you enable this additional setting, Meta can upload your content to its cloud «on a regular basis to create ideas for you with machine learning and AI models.» Meaning Meta will have continual access to your photos, even if you don’t post them on Facebook or post the newly created suggestions.
A Meta spokesperson said, «We’re exploring ways to make content sharing easier for people on Facebook by testing suggestions of ready-to-share and curated content from a person’s camera roll. These suggestions are opt-in only and only shown to you — unless you decide to share them — and can be turned off at any time. Camera roll media may be used to improve these suggestions, but are not used to improve AI models in this test.»
The mobile app help page says that enabling this feature means you agree to Meta’s AI terms, and it says your photos won’t be used for advertising targeting. The feature is in early stages of testing for US- and- Canada based users, but it won’t be available for folks who live in Illinois or Texas. Your suggested photo won’t be shared automatically unless you choose to.
Here’s how to access the setting:
- Open the Facebook app and tap Menu at the bottom right corner.
- Tap the gear icon in the upper right corner. You can also scroll down to Settings & privacy and then navigate to Settings.
- Tap Camera roll sharing suggestions.
- Scroll to Get creative ideas made for you by allowing camera roll cloud processing.
- Your decision: If you don’t want Meta’s AI feature to access objects and information from your camera roll, make sure the toggle icon is gray and shows a circle to the left. If this icon is blue and you see the toggle circle to the right, that means the feature is on. You’ll tap this toggle icon to turn the feature on or off.
This feature is currently only available on the iPhone or Android mobile apps. If you have this setting enabled but then change your mind, Meta’s help page says it will remove your content from its cloud after 30 days. There’s no way to confirm its removal, though.
For more, check out how to stay relatively safe while using AI models.
