Recently, Facebook has started requesting users in certain regions to approve access to their mobile photo albums. This is aimed at utilizing AI to automatically suggest edited versions of photos, including those that haven’t yet been uploaded to Facebook. However, this practice has sparked significant concerns among users regarding personal privacy.
According to reports, when users create a new Story in the Facebook App, they might see a pop-up prompt asking if they want to enable the Cloud Processing feature to receive creative suggestions. If users click on Allowed, Facebook will generate various new ideas using media from the user's albums, such as collages, retrospectives, one-click AI designs, or photo themes. The company noted that to enable these features, the media from the albums will be uploaded to its cloud servers and continuously processed based on information like time, location, or theme. Relevant information specifies that only the user can view these suggestions, and the media will not be used for ad targeting.
By selecting Allowed, users agree to Meta's AI service terms, which permit the AI to analyze users' media and facial features. Meta will use the date in the photos and the people or objects appearing in them to generate creative ideas. According to these terms, shared photos will undergo AI analysis, including facial features, thereby offering new functionalities such as summarizing image content, adjusting images, and generating new creative capabilities based on existing content.
The AI terms also grant Meta the right to Retain and Use any personal information shared by users, aiming to personalize the output of its AI. Meta claims it is capable of reviewing user interactions with its AI, a process that may involve human oversight. However, the terms do not clearly define what constitutes personal information, only mentioning that it includes user-submitted prompts, feedback, and other such data.
For years, Meta has relied on the billions of public images uploaded by users to Facebook and Instagram to train its AI programs. Now, it aims to access even more billions of images that users have yet to upload. Recently, Meta admitted that it has been scraping all content posted on Facebook and Instagram since 2007 to train its generative AI models. While the company claims to only use public posts from users aged 18 and over, the definitions of Public and what qualifies as Adult users from 2007 remain unclear.
Users can find the Album Sharing Suggestions page in the preferences section of Facebook settings. This page includes two switches: one for allowing Facebook to recommend photos from the mobile album while using the app, and the other for activating or deactivating the Cloud Processing feature.
Meta's spokesperson Maria Cubeta reiterated that this feature is still in testing, stating: We are exploring ways to simplify content sharing on Facebook by testing ready-made sharing and curation suggestions drawn from users' photo albums on their phones. She added: These suggestions are only for optional display and are shown to users—unless shared voluntarily, they will not be made public, and users can choose to turn them off at any time. The media at hand may be used to improve suggestions, but in this test, it will not be utilized to enhance the AI model. However, Meta has not guaranteed that they won't use this media for AI training in the future.
