Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, released tools and information to help users understand how AI influences what they see on its apps.
The introduction of nearly two dozen explainers, focused on features like Instagram Stories and Facebook’s news feed, explains how Meta selects the content to recommend to users. Meta’s move is part of its “wider ethos of openness, transparency, and accountability,” as per the blog post of Meta’s President of Global Affairs, Nick Clegg.
In the blog post, Clegg also writes, “With rapid advances taking place with powerful technologies like generative AI, it’s understandable that people are both excited by the possibilities and concerned about the risks.”
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With European lawmakers’ swift advancement of legislation, there could be requirements for explanation and transparency from companies that use AI. US lawmakers hope to begin working on similar legislation later this year.
Meta’s newly-released 22 system cards for Facebook and Instagram will provide information on how its AI systems rank content and predict what content might be most relevant to its users. They cover feeds, reels, stories, and other surfaces that people visit to find content from the people or accounts they follow. The system cards also cover AI systems that recommend “unconnected” content from accounts, people, or groups they don’t follow.
Now, users can customize their feeds, on both Facebook and Instagram, by accessing a menu from individual posts. While Meta had only offered users the ability to tell Instagram to show less, not more, the release of its new tools provides the ability to ask Instagram to supply more of a certain content type.
Meta will also provide a content library and an application programming interface (API) featuring a variety of content from Facebook and Instagram for researchers to study its platforms.
Additionally, the platform is expanding the Why Am I Seeing This? feature to Facebook Reels and Instagram Reels tab and Explore over the coming weeks. The feature was previously found in some ads and Feed content on both Facebook and Instagram.
