Used Meta AI, now Instagram is using my face on ads targeted at me
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- electronic billboards on the bus corner start doing this while walking down the street
- your favorite peacock sitcom starts injecting your friends or recent vacation locations or friends' recent vacation locations on the main character's digital picture frame. Your buddy recently went to Sandals Resort in Jamaica? Now that's going to be emphasized in the unused screen real estate in the background of the bar scene to play on your fomo.
- hell, sporting games already have digital billboards on the field barriers that are customized for different markets / broadcasters... why not customize them further for the individual stream
Cool use case: personalizing wayfinding signage e.g. in an airport
Bad use case: most of the rest of them
Welcome to our new dystopian hellscape.
Feels more like it generated more than the user asked for and now it’s just showing those images in their feed.
The obvious response is "well, yeah. So? They need it." but that's not how ordinary people, who don't deal with this daily, think. When they see "only you can see this" I think they take it literally.
The computer is always watching and sometimes so are the people running the computers.
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-ai-face-images-instagra...
[1] https://www.meta.com/help/artificial-intelligence/imagine/?s...
"I asked Meta AI for photos of myself and it started advertising Meta AI by showing me photos of myself."
How does this "function like" an ad? Why are we even using the word ad? This is not how ads work. By this definition what isn't an ad?
But the UI to sign up for this service looks like a “type in the text box, get an image” sort of service. It also doesn’t mention this instagram integration, other than requiring you to log in with a meta account.
You still get to make your own promoted images, so that’s marginally useful.
The main weirdness is it making its own images, on your behalf.
If you get value from random slop images with no particular theme, then cool. You can look at them as they show up.
But really, these are just throw away assets. It’s just meant to get you to click thru into the meta.ai upsell this links to.
It’s not quite an ad… because technically… it did something for you? There’s some implication that this random feed of useless images of you is… valuable. So it’s a service you accidentally walk into using, that just happens to redirect you to meta.ai when you click on it.
Gotta say, this first batch of released AI features for the masses has been deeply underwhelming. Custom emojis and random pictures of me in random situations in some feed where the only reason I'm not scrolling past it is that it's a picture of me I don't remember being in hardly seems worth the valuations the stock market has been giving these things.
I suspect that if there was a way to clean up the metrics to see only what people actually wanted to engage with with these AI products, it would pop the bubble instantly. So much gaming the metrics by forcing it on people then claiming victory for the AI.
(I don't use LLMs for coding but at least that has a very clear value proposition. Search is nice now, but mostly because conventional search was ruined with malice aforethought... search AIs will follow soon enough. Enjoy that honeymoon while you can.)
> You can turn this feature off and delete your setup photos in Meta AI settings at any time.
I don’t know when this trend started but I don’t remember it being this bad in the past.
This is like using an online photo editing tool once, and then seeing ads to that photo editing tool show up on the internet, still using the image you up loaded that one time.
They may have the same parent, but are distinct entities.
but putting that aside meta does give themself the right to use your face for ads and has used it and has won law suites about it before (through the cases I was aware of are quite old, i.e. before various right to be forgotten laws or GDPR).
So if they want to use your face to create an bot account to "increase engagement" they probably can do so without (legal) repercussions.
I do think that Meta, and others should be grilled to hell and back - but this particular situation is not noteworthy at all. Goes to show actually, how important PR is - the thing, and its public perception are completely separated, and so, needs its own management. Even if the thing in question is a tech thing on a tech forum.
I can understand the annoyance from cross-linking apps in the same way it's annoying to get the Threads popup in your feed, but really, this is utter clickbait.
Put me off non free to air TV for my entire adult life until streaming services became a thing, and you better believe I'm immediately unsubscribing from those the second they pause a video I'm watching to show me promos or ads.
On that basis, I think it falls squarely in the advertising category.
I’m sure someone that works in that industry can drop their knowledge on it.
It doesn't seem that much different from when I'm typing a chat reply in Snapchat and it starts automatically suggesting stickers with mine and my friends' faces doing silly things with cartoon bodies. Or using my avatar to try and upsell me to their premium subscription. Don't give them a picture of your face to mess around with if you don't like them messing around using a picture of your face.
OK. In fact, I'll do better than that. I won't interact with any of their products or services in any way, including blocking all their domains several times over in various browser extensions.
Snapchat, too.
Actually I used my time machine to implement it already.
How much surreal harassment will you people put up with?
I recently had someone stunned (actually, truly stunned) that I didn’t have Instagram.
I spent 5 minutes looking at it years ago, and deleted it - and have never regretted that decision.
Notably, I’m also unsurprisingly no fun at parties.
While this example was unexpected, it was predicted (Minority Report et al.) and is very much in line with their MO.
What’s interesting to me is that some people seem to have a strong emotional reaction to the fact that it’s possible to describe this as “Instagram using my face in an ad,” even if the underlying event lacks the characteristics that would make that statement outrageous.
It's more similar to Windows trying to sell you OneDrive through the Security Center, which is widely loathed, and recognized as an ad.
Well, there it is again: what seems to make it objectionable is that it fits a certain definition, rather than it exhibiting some intrinsically objectionable features. (Note I’m not criticizing this; I just find it interesting.)
Since I don’t personally see this as an ad, I might describe it as “The screenshots show an example of output that the user can generate with Meta AI. The example shown isn’t emotionally enagaging, and it resembles placeholder content.”
What would make this stand out for me is if Meta owned a tooth whitening business, and then used this placement to show a version of myself with a whiter smile. Or any of the other dystopian examples in this thread. But the one that actually occurred just doesn’t register for me as a breach of trust.
Also, while the example shown does resemble placeholder content, it pretty clearly seems designed to evoke an emotional response, it seems designed to appear cool and futuristic.
And regardless, people have a very high sensitivity to how their image is used. If I haven't given Instagram specific permission to use my image for something, it really really can't use my image for that thing. This goes beyond issues like copyright, it's a very basic human right to control how your own likeness is used.
Either way, we get experimented on like lab rates and they get their bonus.
It speaks to their seeming inability to read the zeitgeist on the general public's attitude towards generative AI at the moment. I'm generally "pro AI", in that I think generative AI is incredibly interesting tech that can potentially be used to create some very cool (and maybe even helpful) things. But "AI" has become a dirty word among the people I know who aren't living in our tech bubble - uncool at best, and evil at worst.
And every time I see something like this, I understand perfectly why they feel that way. Every new hamfisted or creepy attempt at inserting AI into everything by companies like Meta just digs the hole even deeper for people's perception of generative AI.
This feels almost a bit too on-the-nose. But no, apparently it's real?
Like if it was "buy this shit", or "your next location sponsored by bud lite" then yeah, but its not an advert.
The post is literally advertising MetaAI's product??? Do you know what an advert's definition is?
> Do you know what an advert's definition is?
according to this: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/advertisement its not.
Look, I don't like meta any more than you do. But this is a service that is provided by them. Its not an advert, meta aren't making money from generating that user's likeness, or any other.
I don't like GenAI, its going to ruin an industry I love, one I wanted to return to. When the bubble pops, its probably going to make me loose my job too. But this isn't an advert.
They did sent mails out last May for instagram (and fb iirc too) in the EU saying you can opt-out of processing in their AI 'improvements'. It was done by filling out a form where you had to tell in a few words why you don't want to participate. Acc. to the message changes came into place on 26th June 2024.
> "(...) we will now rely on a legal basis called legitimate interests to use your data and to develop and improve AI on Meta's services. This means that you have the right to object to the way your data is used for this purpose. If your objection is recognised, it will automatically be recognised in the future."
I'd say it's like you'd develop your photos at the workshop where they say they can randomly use their clients photos in ads in your local papers or whatever. And then you do bump on a poster of your local travel agency including yourself lying on the beach in Saint-Tropez/France slapped all over the city. Where of course you haven't been to France at all.
Hence the bit in the title: “Used Meta AI to edit a selfie, now instagram is using my face on ads targeted at me.”
>onanistic preening
You mean you you'd be wanting to consent to one session, while actually affirmatively consenting to something else. On one hand I agree there would be nothing wrong with limiting the scope of what is legally allowed in a ToS. On the other, I also think it's good that single parties can't just spontaneously wish away conditions of business agreements they don't like (although I imagine with a modicum of effort, you could modify that consent with Meta at any point).
There's a comment in the reddit thread about how consent to Meta is invalid because Meta is essential to participating in modern society - basically saying that being a Meta user is a civil right. Bonkers.
Valid consent requires knowing what you're consenting to. This is not a new principle.
Anyone else would just quietly take your face and those of your contacts and use it to generate an endless stream of faces which are unambiguously not you, yet compellingly familiar.
...maximizing their brainwashing effectiveness while minimizing the ick factor and triggering privacy minding behaviors.
A lot of harm is done in the world by parties adaptively keeping their invasive conduct at just below the level which will trigger retaliation, legislation, etc. Like databrokers will sell exceptionally private data to anyone with a few bucks, but it's only a 'data breach' when someone takes that data without paying. The existence of databreaches even provides nice plausible deniability for harms that arise from the business of privacy-invasion-for-profit.
> Object to Your Information Being Used for AI at Meta
Sorry to read this, it is frustrating to see our own face in feeds targeted at us. No clue who thought that would be a win.
Probably not for four years, at least
>Things that feel illegal will probably become illegal someday
Also, if you think about this phrasing for just a second, this is the chilling effect. Suppressing expression due to the anticipation of negative outcomes.
Didn't StreetView start blurring people when they ask? Seems like people don't mention it anymore because the privacy issue was mitigated.
Smartphones could be another good example. As the joke goes, people in the 60s are afraid the government wiretaps their phones. Nowadays, they say: "Hey wiretap! Do you have a recipe for pancakes?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Street_View_privacy_con...
In Europe many companies think ethics even if is not illegal on paper.
In the U.S. you need to get big before it is illegal, lobby for it and then pay fines. But fines are okay since you got big already.
Nestle. Shell Oil. I can go on... literally nothing about what you said is grounded in reality.
Look, I'm not +1 the EU here, but having some level of legal protection against marauding corporations is good. Sure EU based companies are evil, but they can't be as abusive to normal people because they are constrained by a semi-functional legal system.
The US used to have that as well, along with a functioning legislature.
To be clear, I gave testimony to the NTHSA that the first Porsche Taycan was unfit for road driving due to extreme errors in the software architecture and in part got the CEO of Porsche fired. (Specifically error handling so laughably bad it caused the entire car to lock up at speed.)
The EU only FOLLOWED grudgingly after the US demanded the recall. I am extremely aware of EXACTLY how risk-taking European companies are.
”Move fast and break things” was even the motto of Zuckerberg back in day in Facebook. There are studies about it.
Even Y Combinator has some history of admitting that they seek people like that:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2579990
I particularly meant tech companies. Of course, you can find unethical businesses everywhere.
SAP, Claude etc are all doing the same things American counterparts do. You need a slight dose of reality.
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."
-Douglas Adams in The Salmon of Doubt
As a further example, do we really want insurance companies serving ads using near and dear ones as potential disaster victims? This is really getting out of hand.
Even if other advertisers start using the system, as long as the generated resulting images are never shared with the advertisers and are unique to each user, its just a futuristic way to help you "imagine" what having XYZ product would be like, which is what most ads strive to do.
People have knee-jerk reactions to anything to do with ads because of the privacy concerns of yesterday, understandably. But if you actually step back and think about this, there's no reduction in privacy that I can see. If people are creeped out by it, I think they should maybe let people disable them with a setting.
But in general, making ads more effective without giving advertisers more data about us is a great thing for the continuation of free amazing internet services!
> People have knee-jerk reactions to anything to do with ads because of the privacy concerns of yesterday, understandably.
Can you elaborate on this? What were the privacy concerns of yesterday that we don’t need to worry about today?
But you granted us full unrestricted access when you agreed to page 58 section J of our latest terms of service. - meta lawyer somewhere
> What were the privacy concerns of yesterday that we don’t need to worry about today?
The web/internet is a hell of a lot more private today than 10 years ago. Third party cookies are basically gone, mobile tracking is going out the door with Apple leading that charge, there are tons of relatively popular browsers and extensions that reduce tracking even more, there's enough privacy legislation that big companies have had to re-architect to preserve privacy as much as possible by default.
Hell, if we're just talking about Meta, they literally nuked a thriving third-party developer API ecosystem to appease people's privacy concerns, out right.
This scenario reminds me of Amazon Prime’s Live TV with hyper-targeted advertising. A friend who has it noticed that his ads revealed what he and his wife had browsed on Amazon. It was fun at times to see that we’d all been looking at the same items, but it also felt a bit too personal. Now he never turn on his TV whenever guests visit.
This is why this ad seems outrageous: it provides this feedback. Demonstrates just a little bit of the power that they have over the person. So the user immediately sobered up, maybe even vowed something to the opposite.
Too right! Sure, Facebook may have facilitated multiple ethnic cleansings around the world, but its a small price to pay to facilitate a dystopian future in which tech illiterate, elderly boomers are bombarded with AI generated ads of their own funerals that encourage them to buy life assurance policies...
AI as an art style evokes primal hate and rage. If you show images to people that are linked to such set of emotions, such set of emotions arise among audiences. As demonstrated.
This tendency of current AI image generators needs to be fixed before AI image generators could be used to create positive impacts.