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 can opt out.
It’s all about AI getting 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 Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Messenger. 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 share publicly to train its AI. There is no way to opt out, even now for European users who have 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. Facebook says it’s a way to get more creative help when you share photos and videos — it takes your existing content and uses AI to enhance or reimagine your photos and videos. Some examples of what Facebook says could be included are 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.
Meta’s AI terms and how to turn off 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 you are regularly giving Meta access to everything in your camera roll for it to scan with its systems and feed to its Meta AI models.
The mobile app help page says that enabling this feature means you agree to Meta’s AI terms. So let’s take a closer look at Meta’s AI terms. The camera cloud processing page says your photos won’t be used for advertising targeting. But Meta’s general AI terms say the company may share the info you share with Meta AI with third parties (like search engines) in order to fulfill your AI requests. It also says you agree not to upload images of people from Illinois or Texas. So there are more than a few confusing elements. I reached out to Meta for clarification and did not get an immediate response.
Here’s how to make sure you’re not sharing your photos with Meta AI:
- 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 > Settings.
- Tap Camera roll sharing suggestions.
- Turn off Get creative ideas made for you by allowing camera roll cloud processing.
This feature is currently only available on the mobile app, so you only need to check this on your iPhone or Android. If you do 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.
