How to keep Meta AI from sharing your prompts on Facebook, Instagram

Artificial intelligence-generated images of women kissing while mud wrestling and President Donald Trump eating poop are some of the conversations users are unknowingly sharing publicly through Meta’s newly launched AI app.  

The company rolled out the Meta AI app in April, putting it in direct competition with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. But the tool has recently garnered some negative publicity and sparked privacy concerns over some of the wacky — and personal — prompts being shared publicly from user accounts.

Besides the mud wrestlers and Trump eating poop, some of the examples CNBC found include a user prompting Meta’s AI tool to generate photos of the character Hello Kitty “tying a rope in a loop hanging from a barn rafter, standing on a stool.” Another user whose prompt was posted publicly asked Meta AI to send what appears to be a veterinarian bill to another person.

“Sir, your home address is listed on there,” a user commented on the photo of the veterinarian bill.

Meta AI chats are private by default and can only be shared publicly through a four-step process that includes a pre-post preview, a company spokesperson said. This includes a feature to hide posts. The spokesperson also said the Discover feed is meant to offer “inspiration and AI hacks” to users.

Users can adjust settings on the app to protect their privacy and keep the app from sharing their queries on Meta’s other apps.

Here’s how to do it

To start, click on your profile photo on the top right corner of the screen and scroll down to data and privacy. Then head to the “suggesting your prompts on other apps” tab. This should include Facebook and Instagram. Once there, click the toggle feature for the apps that you want to keep your prompts from being shared on.

After, go back to the main data and privacy page and click “manage your information.” Select “make all your public prompts visible only to you” and click the “apply to all” function. You can also delete your prompt history there.

Meta has beefed up its recent bets on AI to improve its offerings to compete against megacap peers and leading AI contenders, such as Google and OpenAI. This week, the company invested $14 billion in startup Scale AI and tapped its CEO Alexandr Wang to help lead the company’s AI strategy.

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