Instagram’s latest update makes the company look at your photos before you upload them technology

The artificial intelligence of Meta, the company that owns Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, can now search through the photos stored in the phone to find the best photos that are worth sharing and that users might like, according to a report published by the technical website “The Verge.”

The new feature allows artificial intelligence to examine all images, whether they have been shared via the platform or not. The company says that the feature searches for hidden gems in your photos among the screenshots and other images that you randomly store on the phone, and then suggests a set of adjustments to the images before publishing them via the platform.

The report indicates that the company tested this feature last July, and when it was subjected to a group of criticism, it officially confirmed that the feature was concerned with photos that were shared on the platform only.

The platform also uses these images to train its artificial intelligence model to generate more realistic images, and this is if you choose to edit or share the images via the platform, according to the company’s statement.

The new update activates this feature automatically, and it can be closed by going to the application settings and deactivating it manually.

Meta spokeswoman Marie Melgizo avoided answering The Verge’s question about artificial intelligence’s access to photos stored in the phone that were not shared on the platform.

The report adds that “Meta” selects a group of photos in your phone history, then uploads them to the company’s servers periodically, and keeps these photos for a period not exceeding 30 days until you delete them, and these photos will not be used for targeting ads.

It is noteworthy that Meta announced last year that it had used images and publications on the platform since 2007 to train its artificial intelligence models.