Please Stop Making Me Opt Out of AI
I’m sick of “opt-out” toggles for automatically enabled generative AI features. It’s past time to make “opt in” the default setting for sensitive features.
In early July, Meta rolled out a new feature where anyone using its AI app could tag public Instagram accounts and generate images using their likenesses. Meta’s decision to turn the feature on by default, so that Instagram users had to actively opt out, was controversial.
Multiple Instagram creators posted viral videos explaining how to opt out and expressed frustration. After three days of outcry, Meta said in a statement that “this feature missed the mark” and rolled back Instagram tagging for its AI chatbot.
“They should have given you the option to opt in rather than opt out. But I am really getting tired of these companies pushing this AI stuff on us when we don’t want to use it,” said creator Sam Sooin Yang in an Instagram video with over 3 million views. As public sentiment has continued to sour on generative AI , Silicon Valley companies have leaned into enabling these features and related settings by default.
The public reaction to Instagram’s “opt-out” default for that AI feature was notable for its swiftness. “That was a clear and immediate pushback,” says Thorin Klosowski, a senior security and privacy activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation . “Honestly, it was great to see how quickly that happened.” Three days from lights on to lights off for a generative AI feature has to be some kind of record.
Recently, I turned off the “ Ask Gemini ” bar in my Google Docs. It popped up at the bottom of my documents one morning and prompted me to use Google's chatbot as part of my regular writing workflow. Immediately, I started digging in the settings to disengage this feature. It's a ritual I’ve also performed an unfortunate number of times in recent years on other platforms, like Dropbox and LinkedIn.
Even beyond this feature, Meta is deeply entrenched in the privacy toggle game. “This type of behavior is not unique for Meta,” says Ben Winters, director of AI and privacy at the Consumer Federation of America . “They are stewards of the opt-out status quo that we find ourselves in, without adequate privacy regulation in the States.” Another Meta setting you might want to opt out of is Facebook’s “Enhanced Browsing” roundup that tracks in-app visited websites on mobile.
