Meta’s AI Chatbot a New Step Toward a Surveillance Society

​We’re not surprised – and we are sure you are not either – to learn that new tech rollouts from Meta and other Big Tech companies voraciously consume our personal data. This is especially true with new services that rely on artificial intelligence. Unlike traditional software programs, AI requires data – lots and lots of our personal data – to continuously learn and improve.
 
If the use of your data bothers you – and it should – then it’s time to wise up and opt out to the extent possible. Of course, opting out is becoming increasingly difficult to do now that Meta has launched its own AI chatbot to accompany its third-generation smart glasses. Based on reporting from Gizmodo and the Washington Post, here’s what we know so far:

• Users no longer have the ability to keep voice recordings from being stored on Meta’s servers, where they “may be used to improve AI.”
• If you don’t want something stored and used by Meta, you have to manually delete it.
• Undeleted recordings are kept by Meta for one year before expiring.
• The smartglasses camera is always on unless you manually disable the “Hey Meta” feature.
• If you somehow manage to save photos and videos captured by your smartglasses only on your phone’s camera roll, then those won’t be uploaded and used for training.
• By default, Meta’s AI app remembers and stores everything you say in a “Memory” file, so that it can learn more about you (and feed the AI algorithms). Theoretically, the file can be located and deleted. No wonder Meta’s AI Terms of Service says, “Do not share information that you don’t want the AIs to use and retain such as account identifiers, passwords, financial information, or other sensitive information.”
• Bonus tip: if you happen to know that someone is an Illinois or Texas resident, by using Meta’s products you’ve already implicitly agreed not to upload their image (unless you’re legally authorized to do so).

None of the tech giants is guiltless when it comes to data privacy, but Meta is increasingly the pioneer of privacy compromise. Culture and technology writer John Mac Ghlionn is concerned that Zuckerberg’s new products and policies presage a world of automatic and thoroughgoing surveillance, where we will be constantly spied on by being surrounded by people wearing VR glasses with cameras.
 
Mac Ghlionn writes:
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“These glasses are not just watching the world. They are interpreting, filtering and rewriting it with the full force of Meta’s algorithms behind the lens. And if you think you’re safe just because you’re not wearing a pair, think again, because the people who wear them will inevitably point them in your direction.
“You will be captured, analyzed and logged, whether you like it or not.”
 
But in the end, unlike illicit government surveillance, most commercial sector incursions on our personal privacy are voluntary by nature. VR glasses have the potential to upend that equation.
 
Online, we can still to some degree reduce our privacy exposure in what we agree to, even if it means parsing those long, hard to understand Terms of Service. It is still your choice what to click on. So, as the Grail Knight told Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade, “Choose wisely.”
 
You should also learn to recognize Meta’s Ray-Bans and their spy eyes.

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