Meta AI wants to scan your photos

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☕ Good morning,

There's something deeply unsettling about Meta asking permission to scan your camera roll while promising they won't use the photos to train AI "unless you edit them."

It's the digital equivalent of "we won't read your diary unless you ask us to help you rewrite a page" - technically true, but it misses the larger point about why giving them access feels invasive in the first place.

_{—Here’s to the first sip.}

TODAY IN AI
Meta AI scans your camera roll

Meta’s rolling out a new AI feature that basically wants to go through your phone’s camera roll to find photos you might’ve forgotten about. It’s supposed to pick out “hidden gems” buried between screenshots, receipts, and random snaps, then suggest edits or collages you can save or share.

But you have to opt in, and that means your photos get uploaded to Meta’s cloud. The company says it won’t use those photos to train its AI unless you actually edit them with Meta’s tools or share the results. So technically, your data stays untouched until you start playing with the AI features.

Meta insists this is about helping people who want to make their photos more shareworthy without spending time editing. But let’s be real, this also sounds like another way for Meta to expand how its AI learns. They’ve already trained models on public Facebook and Instagram posts since 2007, so this feels like the next step training on what’s still private, but only if you let them.

It’s kind of smart, but also sneaky. You get cooler photo suggestions, and Meta gets a little more insight into your life.

TECH BARISTA
Amazon loses trust after major outage

Amazon’s cloud just had one of its worst days in years. A massive 15-hour outage hit AWS and took down parts of the internet everything from Apple Music and McDonald’s apps to Epic Games and Venmo stopped working. Even Amazon’s own Alexa and Ring systems weren’t spared.

The issue started with a glitch in a key database system in AWS’s biggest data center region in Virginia. That one failure caused a chain reaction that broke other services and made it impossible for some companies to even launch new servers. By the time it was fixed, hundreds of apps had already gone dark.

For AWS, this hurts more than just uptime stats. The company’s been trying to hold its lead while Microsoft and Google are gaining ground with AI-powered cloud tools. Reliability is the one thing Amazon always bragged about, and now it’s taken a hit.

Some businesses might start thinking about spreading their data across multiple clouds instead of depending on just one. But that’s expensive and messy, so most will probably stick around. Still, if you’re a startup looking for where to host your app, Microsoft and Google suddenly look a lot more tempting.

GADGETS BARISTA
iQOO Z10R in Indonesia is just a rebranded Vivo V60 Lite

So iQOO’s bringing the Z10R to Indonesia, but here’s the twist it’s not the same phone that launched in India. Same name, different specs.

The Indonesian Z10R runs on a Dimensity 7360-Turbo chip, packs a 6,500mAh battery, and supports 90W charging. The Indian version had a Dimensity 7400 and a smaller 5,700mAh battery with slower charging. So yeah, totally different under the hood.

What’s interesting is that this new Z10R looks almost identical to the vivo V60 Lite same hardware, same 120Hz OLED display, same battery setup. Even the design matches. So it’s pretty clear iQOO’s just rebranding the V60 Lite with new colors like Elegant Black and Titanium Gold.

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STARTUP BAR
NordVPN founders raise €30M to make AI safer

Most companies want to use AI but worry about leaking data every time someone drops info into ChatGPT. That’s what Nexos.ai is trying to fix. Started by the NordVPN founders, the company just raised €30 million to help businesses use AI safely.

Nexos acts like a secure middle layer between employees and AI tools filtering data, managing access, and keeping everything compliant. It’s built around two parts: an AI Workspace for employees and an AI Gateway for developers that connects to over 200 AI models.

The round was led by Index Ventures and Evantic Capital, valuing Nexos around $350 million. The team’s now scaling across Europe and North America, targeting companies that want AI’s speed without the security nightmares.