There's a new proposed class action lawsuit against Meta that alleges they harvested Facebook and Instagram photographs for biometric information that was used to train image generation models and develop an, as yet, unreleased facial recognition feature called Nametag for smart glasses.
Meta says that the lawsuit has misrepresented the situation and notes that Nametag has not yet been released to consumers.
This gets a little interesting because I think most reasonable people would agree that posting a photograph and granting permission to display it are not the same thing as volunteering your face to become raw material for AI bots or other technology that is invented in a future date.
I think we all remember when uploading a photograph to Facebook simply meant that here's a photograph I'd like my friends to see. Apparently we need to start adding that we don't want it turned into a biometric signature, training robot to identify me through someone's glasses, or for it to be used to build the next technology that nobody has even conceived of yet.
Don't get me wrong, we have always in the photography community argued about the legal and moral implications of copyright. But there might be an even simpler principle here…
Taking or uploading a photograph should not necessarily mean surrendering control of every possible subsequent use of that image. A photograph is not an all-you-can-eat data buffet.
I think another interesting element of this lawsuit is that it was filed by a set of parents and their children, which adds an entirely different angle. angle regarding consent and the use of images.
This also brings to mind the old adage that if you're not paying for a software, then you are the product, which has been a popular saying among Silicon Valley types for many years.
You can read more about the lawsuit over here.
