Facebook Wants to Train AI With Photos on Your Phone
Facebook is trying to get access to the photos on your phone. In exchange for collages and AI edits, the company wants to use your private archive for AI training.
In the US and Canada, some users are now being asked to grant access to all of their photos, even those that haven’t been uploaded to Facebook before. The prompt typically appears when users attempt to post a new story on the app.
With the message ‘Get creative ideas made for you by allowing camera roll cloud processing,’ Facebook tries to convince you to create collages, overviews, themes, or an AI restyling of your images. According to TechCrunch, it explicitly states that the photos will not be used for advertising.
In practice, your photos are sent to the app’s servers, along with the time and location, among other details. They are then analysed, including facial features. You are permitted to generate new content based on those images. Meta is also allowed to keep and use personal information, although it does not provide detailed information about what it considers personal information.
Anyone who agrees to the feature will provide Meta, Facebook’s parent company, with a significant amount of private data. After all, it will then have access to every photo you have ever taken with your smartphone, as well as every photo you will ever take.
Consequences unclear
The notification currently only appears in the US and Canada. Whether Facebook wants to do the same in Europe is unclear. Privacy laws in the EU are stricter, which means that Meta previously had to obtain permission to use your public profile data for AI purposes.
Currently, the consequences are unclear. An AI system that knows precisely what millions of people look like can ideally generate images of those people. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that those photos or the AI application in which they are used will never be used for other purposes. Suppose Meta ever enters into a partnership with, say, American security services, companies that offer data mining services, or if a data leak ever occurs at the company, then much more than your profile data will be on the street.
