Tech Giant Meta is given green light from European Union data regulators to train artificial intelligence models using content published across social media platforms.
Posts and comments from adult users of Meta’s stable platform, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, as well as questions and queries to AI assistants in the company, are now being used to improve the AI model, Meta said in a blog post on April 14th.
“It is important that our generative AI models are trained with a variety of data so that we can understand the incredibly diverse nuances and complexities that make up the European Community.”
Meta has a green light from the EU data regulator and trains AI models using content published on social media. Source: Meta
“It means everything from dialect and colloquialism to hyperlocal knowledge and the clear way in which different countries use humor and irony in their products,” he added.
However, according to Meta, private messages from friends, family and people with public data from EU account holders under the age of 18 are still off limits.
You can also opt out of using data for AI training via forms that Meta says in emails “easy to find, read and use.”
EU regulators suspend AI training plans for high-tech companies
Last July, Meta delayed AI training using public content across the platform after privacy advocacy groups. This called for a suspension of rollouts until review was made by the Ireland Data Protection Commission (IDPC) after filing complaints with 11 European countries.
The complaint argued that changes to Meta’s privacy policy will allow the company to train AI products using years of personal posts, private images and online tracking data.
Meta says the AI training approach is fulfilling its legal obligation and the company continues to be “constructively involved with IDPC” and has received permission from the European Data Protection Commission, the EU data protection regulator.
“This is how we’ve been training other regional generator AI models since launch,” Meta said.
“We’re following examples set up by others, including Google and Openai. Both already use data from European users to train AI models.”
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The Irish data regulator launched a cross-border investigation with Google Ireland Limited last September to determine whether the Tech giant complied with EU data protection laws while developing the AI model.
X faced similar scrutiny and agreed to cease the use of personal data from users in the EU and European Economic Area last September. Previously, X used this data to train the artificial intelligence chatbot Grok.
The EU launched the AI Act in August 2024, establishing a legal framework for technology, including data quality, security and privacy clauses.
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