Not sure if anybody heard about this, but since Tuesday a new tool was released by Meta for Instagram which allows you to edit other people's public images with AI. And yes, the title is correct: they need no permission, it is YOU who has to disable such thing from your profile or turn it private.

No previous announcement that this will be available at a later date. No previous warning of changes coming to Instagram. No previous mention that a new tool was coming to Instagram. Just a surprise shadow drop that the tool was already available globally. Because they can.

The worst thing is that, if you don't do anything to your already created profile, this will be enabled automatically. So, they've basically changed the app's functions without warning, permission or whatever. If you want your account as it was before, deactivate this. Instead of allowing anyone who wants to upgrade by manually activating it, they did it the other way around.

And don't forget that, if this is enabled on your account, NOBODY will need to ask permission to use your pictures, they are directly allowed to do with this tool whatever the f*** they want. Public personalities like artists, athletes and more are absolutely open to having their face and image in any imaginable thing and they can't sue or unauthorize or delete the result because no permission is needed, and of course they won't let you know your image has been used by this tool either.

I'm quite certain this new tool violates certain privacy laws, at least here in Europe. No surprise, because Meta has been repeatedly denounced and fined in several occasions for breaching those laws (and we can see it has absolutely no f***ing effect on them). It seems that privacy has literally no meaning for them, seen first with their Meta Glasses and now exacerbated much further.

I sincerely wish they get the backlash they deserve for this, just the way the world reacted to Sony's announcement on killing the physical format. Companies keep doing whatever the f*** they want and breaching as many laws as they can, while governing bodies only impose monetary sanctions they can pay with just a day's worth of earnings. Beautiful, fantastic, amazing.

I can't stop thinking about inactive accounts that may have been lost forever and which can't do anything not only to disable this function but also to delete their account. And imagine if this is just the starting step and decide to bring the same thing to Whatsapp (now that we will all have a chosen name) or Facebook, the other properties of Meta. Privacy is basically killed off and alternatives will see a major rise because of a big company pissing off its customers.

This has me utterly furious. Not only can companies do whatever they want, there's also nothing authorities can do to stop them. In the end, YOU are the one who must be alert to these things and do the necessary changes. Becayse why asking for permission when we can do it in our own without any sort of drawback?

Not sure what will be the people's opinion on this, but I'm sincerely just two steps away from uninstalling Instagram altogether. I don't care if I end up having no social media, I'm tired of all this s*** and everything you have to battle to have the experience you were promised (and the only one you agreed to, because pre-2020 there was nothing about AI in the Terms and Conditions).

I agree that these policy and rule changes out of nowhere that opt you in are utter garbage but what was stopping someone from grabbing a public image and editing it with AI before this?

Like, I could open facebook or instagram or anything else and find a publicly available image and then upload it to an AI and edit it however I want. Maybe not "legally" but I could do it before. Meta changing their policy doesn't make it any more or less legal from what I can see.

Not saying I agree with any of this but I don't see what it really changes. Anything you put out onto the internet you lose control over. That's why I've stopped posting things and why my personal facebook is private to friends only and I don't upload to anything else.

Doesn't stop these companies from doing their best to pre-upload your photos (like Facebook apparently does) and what not but I do try and keep as much from the open public internet as possible at this point.

It is kind of amazing how 20 years ago it would have been insane to think of how openly we give away our information on the internet now. Back then no one knew who you were unless you purposefully told them and that was pretty rare. I guess you can still operate that way today if you choose but with so many sites requiring more and more information you basically have an easily identifiable trail blazed through the internet at this point.

I am definitely against this change. I think opening more things up to AI is not a good thing. All I've seen from AI so far has been damaging so I'm against more of it happening but at this point I don't know what else could be done to stop it when companies are willing to make decisions like this.

geeogree : The change is that, before, you had to grab the image and process it through your own AI software. Now, the same app gives you everything you need to do that, so now it's cost-free and easy to use because of being fully integrated within Instagram. Simply said, it is now fully accessible to anyone and much easier to use. Not to mention nobody is a culprit now because this is absolutely legal since the app allows it and it is you who can block it.

I am aware the change is barely minimal given what could be done up until now, but even if minimal this change packs a punch. Now it's no longer the fact you're using neutral software with a malicious intent, it's that you can do all of that without even leaving the app and free of any legal drawbacks because the responsible now is the app itself.

I sincerely wish the whole AI bubble would explode. If you want to use it as an optional help in jobs that's good, but beyond that is damaging society more than we even realize. Society at large isn't ready to handle it and never will, why should we give them nigh-unlimited access to it then?

EX Palen : ah, that makes more sense. I missed the part where it was all integrated together.

I agree that the bubble needs to pop. I'm not sure how much longer these companies can't spend the money on it.

Although, I'm thinking that either governments want the AI as a form of control or AI is already self-aware and is now expanding as rapidly as possible before we notice. Off topic a bit but it is weird to me that there are data centers going every where as fast as they are. Something doesn't quite add up.