Meta Platforms used public Facebook and Instagram posts to train parts of its new Meta AI virtual assistant, but excluded private posts shared only with family and friends in an effort to respect consumers’ privacy, the company’s top policy executive told Reuters in an interview.

Meta also did not use private chats on its messaging services as training data for the model and took steps to filter private details from public datasets used for training, said Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg, speaking on the sidelines of the company’s annual Connect conference this week.

“We’ve tried to exclude datasets that have a heavy preponderance of personal information,” Clegg said, adding that the “vast majority” of the data used by Meta for training was publicly available.

He cited LinkedIn as an example of a website whose content Meta deliberately chose not to use because of privacy concerns.

Clegg’s comments come as tech companies including Meta, OpenAI and Alphabet’s Google have been criticized for using information scraped from the internet without permission to train their AI models, which ingest massive amounts of data in order to summarize information and generate imagery.

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The companies are weighing how to handle the private or copyrighted materials vacuumed up in that process that their AI systems may reproduce, while facing lawsuits from authors accusing them of infringing copyrights.

Meta AI was the most significant product among the company’s first consumer-facing AI tools unveiled by CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday at Meta’s annual products conference, Connect. This year’s event was dominated by talk of artificial intelligence, unlike past conferences which focused on augmented and virtual reality.

Meta made the assistant using a custom model based on the powerful Llama 2 large language model that the company released for public commercial use in July, as well as a new model called Emu that generates images in response to text prompts, it said.

The product will be able to generate text, audio and imagery and will have access to real-time information via a partnership with Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

The public Facebook and Instagram posts that were used to train Meta AI included both text and photos, Clegg said.

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Those posts were used to train Emu for the image generation elements of the product, while the chat functions were based on Llama 2 with some publicly available and annotated datasets added, a Meta spokesperson told Reuters.

Interactions with Meta AI may also be used to improve the features going forward, the spokesperson said.

Clegg said Meta imposed safety restrictions on what content the Meta AI tool could generate, like a ban on the creation of photo-realistic images of public figures.

On copyrighted materials, Clegg said he was expecting a “fair amount of litigation” over the matter of “whether creative content is covered or not by existing fair use doctrine,” which permits the limited use of protected works for purposes such as commentary, research and parody.

“We think it is, but I strongly suspect that’s going to play out in litigation,” Clegg said.

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Some companies with image-generation tools facilitate the reproduction of iconic characters like Mickey Mouse, while others have paid for the materials or deliberately avoided including them in training data.

OpenAI, for instance, signed a six-year deal with content provider Shutterstock this summer to use the company’s image, video and music libraries for training.

Asked whether Meta had taken any such steps to avoid the reproduction of copyrighted imagery, a Meta spokesperson pointed to new terms of service barring users from generating content that violates privacy and intellectual property rights.

© Thomson Reuters 2023

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Meta showcased a host of new products and services, including the Meta Quest 3 mixed reality headset and a pair of smart glasses made in collaboration with Ray-Ban, at its Meta Connect annual conference on Wednesday. Alongside the hardware, the company also announced its own AI assistant, Meta AI, and a variety of AI experiences across Meta’s suite of apps and devices, including AI stickers in Meta apps and AI editing tools for Instagram. Meta AI, a conversational generative AI assistant much like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Microsoft’s Bing, will be available on WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram.

Meta AI will be powered by the company’s custom model that borrows from Meta’s large language model, Llama 2. The AI assistant, Meta said, will provide real-time information in response to text-based queries, trawling the internet via Bing search. Meta AI will also generate images based on text prompts. The AI assistant can help plan hiking trips with your friends in a group chat, prepare recipes, or help with your shopping list. Users can type in “@MetaAI /imagine” inside their chat box and follow it up with descriptive text prompts for what they want the AI assistant to do. Meta AI is also coming to the company’s latest devices, the Meta Quest 3 and the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.

In addition to its default AI assistant, the company also showed off AI avatars with distinct personalities. Meta is bringing 28 AI characters, each with a unique backstory and behaviour. These AI characters can be conversed with in WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger, and will also include some public figures and influencers that Meta has partnered up with for their likenesses. Famous people coming as AI characters include Dwayne Wade, Kendall Jenner, Mr. Beast, Snoop Dogg and more.

Emu can generate stickers based on user prompts

Photo Credit: Meta

Meta is calling its image generation tool ‘expressive media universe’, or Emu. The tool can also quickly generate AI stickers based on a user’s text prompts inside apps like WhatsApp or Instagram to share with friends. “It’s high-quality, photorealistic,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the presentation. “But, one of the coolest things is the Emu generates that fast. It’s not a minute. It takes five seconds to generate one of these,” he added. This custom sticker generation feature will roll out to select English-language users over the next month in WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, and Facebook Stories.

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The Facebook parent is also bringing new AI-powered image editing tools, specifically two new features — Restyle and Backdrop — that utilise technology from the Emu tool. Restyle acts as a kind of custom filter that works based on user prompts. Based on single descriptor or a more detail prompt, Restyle will edit your images to reflect a particular mood. And as the name suggests, Backdrop will let users change the background of their images based on custom prompts. Images created using both tools will carry markers that indicate the image is AI-generated. Meta said that Restyle and Backdrop were coming soon to Instagram but did not provide a concrete release date for the same.

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Meta Smart Glasses in collaboration with Ray-Ban were introduced on Wednesday alongside the Meta Quest 3 and other products. Users can livestream videos to Facebook and Instagram using the smart glasses, hands-free. The frame comes with a 12-megapixel camera sensor and an LED unit. This smart wearable succeeds the Ray-Ban stories, which were the company’s first smart glasses and was released in September 2021. However, unlike AR/VR headsets, the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses do not feature a display unit.

Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses with standard lenses start at $299 (roughly Rs. 24,999), while Polarized lenses and transition lenses are priced at $329 (roughly Rs. 27,400) and $379 (roughly Rs. 31,500), respectively. It is offered in 150 different custom frame and lens design combinations.

The Ray-Ban Meta Smart glasses are currently available for pre-orders in 15 countries, including the US, Canada, Australia, and European markets. The sale of the smart glasses will start from October 17 in these regions. Meta has not revealed the India launch date of the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses.

Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses specifications, features

A 12-megapixel sensor and an LED light, which doubles as a recording indicator are placed within two circular cutouts on either side of the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses frame. Users can use the camera to take photos with a resolution of 3,024 x 4,032 pixels and 1080p videos of up to 60 seconds. With the Meta View app, the users can then share these media files to any other image/ video sharing apps.

The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses also enable first person perspective livestreaming in which a user can stream whatever they are looking at with the glasses on in real time, to their respective Instagram and Facebook profiles. Users can also use the ‘Hey Meta’ prompt to enable handsfree functions.

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Even though the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses do not come with a display, the company claims, that compared to Ray-Ban Stories, the dual open-ear speakers in the new glasses offer less audio leakage and is said to bring up to 50 percent louder sound, deeper bass, and more clarity.

The Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses are powered by the new Qualcomm Snapdragon AR1 Gen1 Platform SoC and packs 32GB of inbuilt storage. Claimed to be sleeker in design than its preceding model, Meta says that the glasses come with up to four hours of battery life, and an additional 32 hours with the charging case. One full charge is claimed to take 75 minutes. The glasses also come with an IPX4 rating.

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