Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is rolling out a thrilling new feature. This update empowers users to use artificial intelligence (AI) to beautify their camera-roll photos. This innovation aims to enhance user experience by transforming old images into new formats, such as animated styles, but it raises questions about privacy and consent.
To make the feature possible, it uses a process called “cloud processing.” Users must consent to it being turned on. Facebook recently added a pop-up message in the Stories tab that asks for this permission, enticing users to turn on the feature. The message says, “Accept,” asking users if they would like their private photos to be used to train the platform’s AI, which analyses images.
Once a user opts into this feature, Meta will identify and scan images uploaded by users—including faces—through artificial-intelligence algorithms. According to Meta’s AI Terms, sharing your images means you consent to them being analyzed. Soon enough, they’ll be analyzing those photos—down to individual facial characteristics—using artificial intelligence. It’s this processing that gives us the opportunity to roll out new features. Now, you can provide a summary of an image’s content, edit images, and create new content based on the given images!
One Reddit user recently stumbled upon one such exciting find. Plus, they discovered that Facebook turned the photo provided into an anime character with help from Meta’s A.I. That picture was posted last week on the image-sharing platform social network. Moreover, it uniquely showcased the company’s imaginative capacity to accelerate content they had already created.
For Facebook users who may be worried their privacy on Facebook, the company offers some tools to limit how their camera roll photos are used. Inside the app, there are two toggles located on the “Camera roll sharing suggestions” page. The first toggle lets users get suggested photos from their camera roll as they scroll through the app. The second toggle allows users to turn on or off “cloud processing.” This provides you with an element of choice concerning which of your images are scanned by Meta’s AI.
Users have to actively opt in to enable this new feature, so it’s important. This provides them agency over how their private likenesses are manipulated or exploited. Now more than ever, tech companies are realizing that privacy and data security are just as important in their products. This increasing concern highlights the importance of informed user consent.