Sarah Perez
Fri, Jun 27, 2025, 11:31 AM 4 min read
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Facebook is asking users for access to their phone’s camera roll to automatically suggest AI-edited versions of their photos — including ones that haven’t been uploaded to Facebook yet.
The feature is being suggested to Facebook users when they’re creating a new Story on the social networking app. Here, a screen pops up and asks if the user will opt into “cloud processing” to allow creative suggestions.
As the pop-up message explains, by clicking “Allow,” you’ll let Facebook generate new ideas from your camera roll, like collages, recaps, AI restylings, or photo themes. To work, Facebook says it will upload media from your camera roll to its cloud (meaning its servers) on an “ongoing basis,” based on information like time, location, or themes.
The message also notes that only you can see the suggestions, and the media isn’t used for ad targeting.
However, by tapping “Allow,” you are agreeing to Meta’s AI Terms. This allows your media and facial features to be analyzed by AI, it says. The company will additionally use the date and presence of people or objects in your photos to craft its creative ideas.
The creative tool is another example of the slippery slope that comes with sharing our personal media with AI providers. Like other tech giants, Meta has grand AI ambitions. Being able to tap into the personal photos users haven’t yet shared on Facebook’s social network could give the company an advantage in the AI race.
Unfortunately for end users, in tech companies’ rush to stay ahead, it’s not always clear what they’re agreeing to when features like this appear.
According to Meta’s AI Terms around image processing, “once shared, you agree that Meta will analyze those images, including facial features, using AI. This processing allows us to offer innovative new features, including the ability to summarize image contents, modify images, and generate new content based on the image,” the text states.
The same AI terms also give Meta’s AIs the right to “retain and use” any personal information you’ve shared in order to personalize its AI outputs. The company notes that it can review your interactions with its AIs, including conversations, and those reviews may be conducted by humans. The terms don’t define what Meta considers personal information, beyond saying it includes “information you submit as Prompts, Feedback, or other Content.”
We have to wonder whether the photos you’ve shared for “cloud processing” also count here.
Meta has not responded to our requests for comment or clarification.
So far, there hasn’t been much backlash about this feature. A handful of Facebook users have stumbled across the AI-generated photo suggestions when creating a new story and raised questions about it. For instance, one user on Reddit found that Facebook had pulled up an old photo (in this case, one that had previously been shared to the social network) and automatically turned it into an anime using Meta AI.
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