Meta, a social media giant, has recently rolled out a fascinating offering named “Imagine with Meta AI,” a free image generator website. Despite its current limitation to a select group of users, the technology is garnering significant attention and accolades for its capabilities. However, recent revelations about the product have raised eyebrows.
“Imagine with Meta AI” has an intriguing backstory—it was trained on a staggering 1.1 billion photos sourced from Instagram and Facebook. Meta, the overseer of social media giants like WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram, has routinely made headlines for its management and monetization of user data. According to some reports, Meta’s new AI technology was molded using a vast dataset of user photos from the two popular social platforms.
Meta, in response to mounting concerns, has defended its approach, emphasizing that the images used were exclusively from public posts and insisting that user privacy remained intact. While using publicly available photos falls within acceptable privacy standards, some critics interpret Meta’s move as a potential breach of personal data protection.
However, to allay fears, it’s crucial to understand that 1.1 billion photos, while a substantial number, represent only a fraction of the content generated. For perspective, Instagram alone witnesses a daily influx of 95 million photos and videos. Therefore, the probability of your personal photos and videos being utilized is relatively low, even acknowledging the existing potential. Currently accessible only to users in the USA, “Imagine with Meta AI” is poised to expand its reach to other countries in the near future.
