Facebook is trying to access photos of your smartphone. In exchange for collages and retouching with AI, the company wishes to use your private images for IA training.
Currently, the social network requires certain users in the United States and Canada access to all their photos, including those which they have not yet published. Notification generally appears when Internet users wish to publish a new story on the application.
With the message ‘Get Creative Ideas Made For You By Allowing Camera Roll Cloud Processing’, Facebook offers collages, overall views, themes or retouching by IA of your images. According to Techcrunch, the notification explicitly mentions that this data will not be used for advertising targeting purposes.
In practice, your photos are sent to the servers of the application, with certain metadata such as time and location. They are then analyzed, including facial features. You then authorize the creation of new content from these images. Meta can also keep and use personal information, without specifying exactly what information it is.
Accepting this feature is providing Meta, the Facebook parent company, a large amount of private data. Indeed, Meta can then access all the photos you have taken or take with your smartphone.
Sailing on implications
Currently, notification only appears in the United States and Canada. Facebook’s intentions vis-Ã -vis Europe are still uncertain. The legislation on the protection of privacy in the EU being much more strict, Meta had to request authorization to use the public data of your profile for AI.
For the moment, the implications are not clear. An AI system that perfectly knows what millions of people look like can perfectly generate images. In addition, nothing guarantees that these photos or the application of AI that treats them will never be used for other purposes. Suppose Meta concludes a partnership with, for example, American security services or companies offering data extraction services, or that the company is a victim of a security flaw, it is no longer just the data of your profile that may end up in nature.
