The tech giant will use public information, such as adult Instagram and Facebook posts, comments, photographs, and captions.
Meta is set to use publicly shared content from adult users in the UK on Facebook and Instagram to train its artificial intelligence (AI) models.
The company will utilize publicly available posts, comments, photos, and captions from adult users on these platforms.
“We’re building AI at Meta to reflect the diverse communities around the world and we look forward to launching it in more countries and languages later this year,” Meta stated.
In July, Meta paused its AI developments in the European Union (EU) after the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) ordered a halt on its AI assistant rollout due to concerns over data privacy.
While Meta uses user data from Facebook and Instagram to train its AI models, the company claims this is done with user consent and offers an opt-out option.
Meta to Utilize Public Information Only
Meta clarified that it will only use public information from adult users in the UK, including posts, comments, photos, and captions on Instagram and Facebook, to enhance its AI models for various features and services.
UK-based adult users will receive notifications explaining Meta’s data usage and will have the option to object to their data being used for AI training. Meta stated:
“We won’t contact people who have already objected as we’ll continue to honor their choice. We’ll honor all objection forms already received, as well as new objection forms submitted.”
Irish Regulator Increases Scrutiny on AI
The Irish DPC, the authority responsible for enforcing the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), has ramped up its oversight.
On Sept. 12, the DPC launched a cross-border investigation into Google Ireland Limited to assess whether Google adhered to EU data protection laws during the development of its AI model.
The investigation will focus on the use of personal data from EU citizens in training Google’s Pathways Language Model 2 (PaLM2), an advanced language model with improved multilingual, reasoning, and coding capabilities introduced in May 2023.
The DPC also looked into the social media platform X, with the investigation concluding after X met the required compliance standards.
On Sept. 4, X agreed to stop using personal data from users in the EU and European Economic Area (EEA) for training its AI chatbot, Grok.
