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Isn’t this “meta.”
An Instagram user was scrolling through his feed only to stumble upon AI-generated photos of himself shared by Meta AI, a phenomenon that people have dubbed “nightmarish.”
According to the anonymous user, who posted about his shock on Reddit this week, the images were created after he “used Meta AI to edit a selfie.”
As a result, the platform began “using my face on ads targeted at me,” he wrote in the online forum.
The personalized post, which only the account holder can see, is labeled as “Imagined for You” and is part of the app’s “Imagine” feature. The tool uses generative AI to conjure up images of users “so you can be the star of your own story and share your favorites with friends,” according to Meta, Axios reported.
“I think there’s been this trend over time where the feeds started off as primarily and exclusively content for people you followed, your friends,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg previously told The Verge about the feature, which began testing in September of last year.
“And you just add on to that, a layer of, ‘Okay, and we’re also going to show you content that’s generated by an AI system that might be something that you’re interested in’ … how big it gets is kind of dependent on the execution and how good it is.”
A Meta spokesperson told CNET that the company is testing new tools that use artificial intelligence to gauge public interest and whether it would be useful to users.
But Redditors were not thrilled by the so-called “creepy” and “scary” new feature.
“This would scare me so bad I would probably assume I had finally lost it and went off the deep end, leading me to send this screenshot to everyone I know to verify it was actually me,” commented one person, who called it “wild.”
“I don’t like the future we’re living in,” chided another.
“I’d throw away my phone,” someone else chimed in.
“I’m so glad I deleted my accounts from Facebook and Instagram,” one user quipped.
“I have removed my photos off Facebook and reduced there permissions to next to nothing,” wrote another person. “F – – k this s – – t.”
“That is a nightmarish situation,” someone else said.
Speaking to CNET, the Meta spokesperson explained that the AI-generated images are only “generated for users who have onboarded to Meta’s Imagine yourself feature, which includes adding photos to that feature, and (who) have accepted the feature’s terms.”
To opt out of Meta AI, just select the three dots located in the top right-hand corner of the “Imagined for You” post.
Users can then select “Stop seeing this content” to banish the AI-generated image suggestions from their feeds.
