Some users have noticed settings that let Meta analyze and retain phone photos

How is the app accessing my photos on iOS when I have not given the app permission to access photos? Did they really find some exploit around this? Or is this photos permission really not the only way?

Same question for Android.

My guess is that this only affects people who have granted FB the permission already.

It doesn't sound like they're accessing your photos without the app being granted permission to do so in iOS. It sounds like they're abusing that permission (if granted) for nefarious purposes that users didn't agree to.

So you granted Facebook permission to access your files in order to share a photo in some group 3 months ago, but now they secretly abuse that permission to scan your entire library for AI training.

I guess if I grant an app access to all my photos, then I assume they can access them all whenever, unless I revoke that access after.