If you’ve scrolled through Instagram lately, you’ve likely come across an odd message in people’s feeds. Stories and posts are popping up, declaring that those users, not Instagram, own the copyright to all images and posts (past, present, and future).
Artificial intelligence, as you might guess, is behind this wave—more specifically, the fear of AI. As Meta grows its AI systems and looks to catch up with competitors, some of its users are objecting to their posts being part of the AI’s training.
Bad news, though: Those posts likely are already incorporated into Meta AI.
“If someone says in a post that they own the rights to future posts, that has no legal teeth whatsoever,” Nicole Morris, a professor at Emory University’s School of Law tells Fast Company. “You don’t have a copyright on a work that doesn’t exist. It’s not like property, where you’re going to be able to deed your land to your heirs. But a) people don’t read and b) people don’t know the full legal ramifications and rules.”
The posts are not too far removed from the cut-and-paste messages that have promulgated social media since its early days. Some say they don’t give Facebook permission to charge their account. Others deny permission for data collected from or about them to be included in a university study. In every case, though, they are about as effective as telling the sun you don’t give it permission to shine.
For the record, Instagram doesn’t argue that your photos belong to you. Its terms of service state that quite clearly. In using any Meta service (whether Instagram, Facebook, or others), though, you do give the company a non-exclusive, worldwide and transferable license to “host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content”.
That license lasts until you delete the content.
Online privacy laws in the U.S. are, simply put, not especially tight. Meta has already been using people’s posts to train its AI. Things are a bit different in Europe, where Meta recently sent a note to users letting them know it would use their public information to train its AI systems beginning June 26.
European users, because of EU laws, do have the option to opt out. Head to your Facebook account, then click on “data settings” followed by “off-Facebook activity.” From there, select “manage your data” and turn off “data sharing,” as well as “A.I. model training.” (Instagram users can head to “settings,” followed by “about,” and then “privacy policy.” That will give you information on Meta A.I. and how to opt out.
In the U.S., your options are more limited. There is no opt-out feature like in Europe, but you can set your account to private. And you can delete any details Meta AI has saved about you by typing “/reset-all-ais” into the chat window.
The best way to ensure your photos and other data isn’t part of Meta’s AI efforts, though? It’s the one you likely knew already, even if it’s entirely unattractive to the social media-obsessed.
“If you really don’t want to have your content used for training, then don’t post it,” says Morris. “That’s the only way to guarantee.”
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