Meta Platforms announced on Monday that it will utilize users’ interactions with its AI, along with public posts and comments shared by adults on its platforms, to train its artificial intelligence models in the European Union. This move follows the recent launch of Meta’s AI technology in Europe, which was initially planned for June 2024 but was delayed due to regulatory concerns regarding data protection and privacy. While Meta AI was introduced in the U.S. in 2023, its expansion into Europe faced challenges due to the strict privacy and transparency regulations of the EU.
Users in the EU who use Meta’s platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, will soon begin to receive notifications detailing the type of data the company will utilize. Additionally, they will be provided with a link to a form where they can object to their data being used for training purposes. It is important to note that while Meta will leverage data such as user queries and questions for Meta AI, private messages and public data from accounts of users under the age of 18 will not be used for training purposes.
Last June, Meta decided to halt the launch of its AI models in Europe following a directive from Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) to postpone the plan to gather data from social media posts. The company also faced criticism from advocacy group NOYB, which called on national privacy watchdogs to prevent the use of social media content for such purposes. Similar investigations are being conducted by the Irish privacy regulator into Elon Musk’s X and Alphabet’s Google. X is being probed for the utilization of EU users’ personal data to train its AI system, Grok, while the DPC initiated an investigation into Google in September to determine whether the company adequately safeguarded users’ data prior to utilizing it for the development of its AI model.
(Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)
