New Delhi, July 11 (IANS). American tech company Meta has discontinued its new AI image generation feature just three days after its launch. This decision was taken at a time when serious questions related to privacy started being raised around the world regarding this feature and social media users, privacy experts and many organizations opposed it.
Meta said its aim was to provide people with a useful creative tool and to give them control over whether their public content could be used in this way. However, the company admitted that based on the feedback received from users, this feature did not meet people’s expectations, hence it has been removed.
Meta launched this feature on July 7 with its in-house AI image generation model Muse Image. Through this feature, any person could write the username of a public Instagram account and create new photos with AI based on the photos of that account.
The feature was only applicable to public Instagram accounts 18 years of age or older and all such accounts were included by default. However, Meta also gave users the option to opt out of it through settings.
The biggest objection was that the people whose photographs were being used to create AI images were not given any information about it. This is the reason why privacy experts, artists’ organizations, talent agencies and social media users openly opposed this feature.
In India too, this matter caught the attention of the government. Electronics and Information Technology Secretary S. Krishnan had said that if any complaint is received regarding this feature, the government will investigate whether it is in accordance with Indian laws or not.
Meanwhile, Meta has also discontinued the end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) direct message feature available on Instagram. The company has asked users that if they have any important message, photo, video or other media, then download it first.
End-to-end encryption is a technology in which only the sender and receiver of the message can read the message. After the removal of this feature, content like meta messages, photos, videos and voice notes will be accessible when needed.
With the rapid expansion of AI technology in recent years, concerns about data security and user privacy have also increased. This decision of Meta shows that companies will have to be more careful on issues like user privacy and transparency before implementing new AI features.
–IANS
DBP