Protect Your Privacy By Turning Off FB Messenger AI
We recently posted several How-To articles about AI settings on apps and sites that are turned on by default (opt-in). Technology companies add AI, turn it on, and hope that you (the end user) doesn’t bother to stay informed and check your settings. Today’s post covers Meta and the built-in AI in Facebook Messenger, and how to turn it off (opt-out).
Why Do You Want To Turn Off The AI Features
By now, most people on social media or who watch the news have heard about Facebook user Kalie Robins and how Facebook AI features identified one of her children from an innocent video she posted online. If you haven’t seen the video, you should. Especially if you post pictures/videos of your kids on social media.
Facebook Messenger Chats Have AI Turned On
The setting for AI in FB Messenger isn’t seen if you look at chats via the website; you have to look at FB Messenger via the app to find the setting. The scariest part of all is that this setting is not a global setting, but instead an individual setting in each chat. Which means you will need to review each person you are chatting to individually and identify which chats you want to turn off the AI setting on. There are three things to keep in mind
- If you use AI, which FB Messenger chats do you trust the other person you are chatting with NOT to misuse the function.
- Which chats are you sharing information in that you don’t really care about, like not sharing private information or family pictures?
- If you DON’T use AI, you can’t just click 1 button and turn the setting off globally. You have to go chat by chat to turn this off. If you have been on FB, how many chats do you really have and how many years back do these chats go?
To Turn Off Facebook Messenger AI in Chats
To turn off the AI feature in an individual chat
- Open the chat -> then click on the i that you see on the top right of the chat window. The name of the person you are chatting with will be at the top left side.
- In the window that opens, scroll down and click on Message Permissions
- In the next window, click in the box that says Turn Off Message Sharing
The funniest thing about this setting is that you can’t see it using Facebook on the web, but once you turn this setting off in the app, a message appears in the same chat on Facebook on the web, saying You turned off message sharing permissions for this chat.
Facebook Lists Some Of The Information They Use
In the FAQ on the Meta site about Message Sharing with Meta AI, it lists
When you or others use these AI features for messages or content in your chats, up to 50 recent messages at a time are shared with Meta AI in order for Meta AI to respond. In some cases, such as mentioning @Meta AI in a group chat, messages from the past 30 days are shared. This means people can share your messages and photos from your group chats with Meta AI, unless this functionality is turned off for the chat.In your end-to-end encrypted chats, messages shared with Meta AI can be accessed by Meta as described in the Meta Privacy Policy and Meta AI’s Terms of Service. The other messages in the chat remain end-to-end encrypted by default.
In addition, it also lists
What to remember about sharing sensitive information
Because others in your chats can share your messages and photos with Meta AI to use AI features, be mindful before sharing sensitive information in chats that you do not want AIs to use, such as passwords, financial information or other sensitive information. We take steps to try to remove certain personal identifiers from your messages that others share with Meta AI prior to improving AI at Meta.
Final Thoughts
Source:
Facebook – Messenger Sharing Messages With Meta AI
