Facebook Is Starting to Feed Its AI with Private, Unpublished Photos
June 28th, 2025Via: The Verge:
For years, Meta trained its AI programs using the billions of public images uploaded by users onto Facebook and Instagram’s servers. Now, it’s also hoping to access the billions of images that users haven’t uploaded to those servers. Meta tells The Verge that it’s not currently training its AI models on those photos, but it would not answer our questions about whether it might do so in future, or what rights it will hold over your camera roll images.
On Friday, TechCrunch reported that Facebook users trying to post something on the Story feature have encountered pop-up messages asking if they’d like to opt into “cloud processing”, which would allow Facebook to “select media from your camera roll and upload it to our cloud on a regular basis”, to generate “ideas like collages, recaps, AI restyling or themes like birthdays or graduations.”
By allowing this feature, the message continues, users are agreeing to Meta AI terms, which allows their AI to analyze “media and facial features” of those unpublished photos, as well as the date said photos were taken, and the presence of other people or objects in them. You further grant Meta the right to “retain and use” that personal information.
I’m just imagining all of the millions of people who have loads of porn saved on their phones and in their cloud storage, which has never been uploaded but will now be used by Facebook etc to generate all sorts of nonsense.
William…. that was my first thought!!