Facebook Wants to Use Your Photos to Train Its AI

AI is only as good as the data it is being trained on. This is similar to humans, where our knowledge and experience play a role in shaping us into who we are today. This is why AI companies are hungry to consume as much data as possible. But Meta wants to go further. The Facebook app now asks users to allow it to use photos on their phone’s camera roll to train Meta AI.

Facebook wants to train its AI on your photos

This isn’t the first time that Facebook has used photos to train its AI. In the past, Facebook relied on images already uploaded to its platform, such as Instagram. These are so-called publicly available images. But now, the company is going one step further in a more invasive manner. It is asking users to allow it access to their phone’s camera roll.

When you launch the Facebook app, you might see a new pop-up message. This message asks for permission to allow the app access to photos on your phone that you haven’t uploaded to Facebook yet. It is also prefaced under the guise of helping users develop “creative ideas” using pictures from their camera roll.

However, there is some fine print. At the bottom, it says if the user taps “Allow,” their photos “can be analyzed by Meta AI.” Whether or not Meta will use them is a different story, but you would basically be granting it access to your pictures. Also, under Meta’s AI terms, it gives the company the right to “retain and use” any personal information you’ve shared. Once again, it’s under the guise of “personalizing” its AI outputs.

You can opt out of it

Thankfully, Facebook isn’t going about this in a shady manner. The pop-up message is clearly asking for permission. If, for whatever reason, you’re not comfortable with the idea, you can decline.

However, if you accidentally tapped “Allow,” you can undo it. The option to turn off the creative ideas feature is buried in the app’s Settings under a section called Camera Roll Sharing Suggestions.

Meta has confirmed this change. In a statement made to TechCrunch, Meta spokesperson Maria Cubeta 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.”