Meta Resumes AI Training with European User Content
Social media company Meta has announced that it will resume using publicly available content from European users to train its artificial intelligence models. The decision, made public on Monday, involves using public posts and comments shared by adult users across the 27-nation European Union.
The company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, stated that interactions with Meta AI, such as questions and queries, will also be utilized to train and improve their models. This move comes after Meta launched its Meta AI assistant in Europe last month, following its initial rollout in the United States and other major markets.
Meta’s AI training efforts had been previously halted due to stringent European Union data privacy laws, which give individuals control over how their personal information is used. The Vienna-based group NOYB, led by activist Max Schrems, had filed complaints with various national privacy watchdogs, urging them to stop Meta before it began training its next generation of AI models.
Despite these concerns, Meta noted that a panel of EU privacy regulators in December affirmed that its original approach met legal obligations. The company emphasized that it won’t use private messages to train its AI model and argued that it is merely following the example set by competitors Google and OpenAI, both of which have already used European user data to train their AI models.
Meta will notify EU users about the training and provide a link to a form where they can object at any time. The company assured that it will honor all objection forms. This development highlights the ongoing debate between tech companies’ data usage practices and user privacy concerns in the digital age.
