Meta Admits to Using Public Facebook and Instagram Data for AI Training Since 2007

Meta, the tech giant behind Facebook and Instagram, has admitted to using publicly posted user content from as early as 2007 for its artificial intelligence model training. The revelation came from the company's global privacy director, Melinda Claybaugh, during a government inquiry on AI adoption in Australia.

According to Claybaugh, unless posts have been explicitly set to private, all text and images from users' public posts dating back to 2007 have been used for AI training. This move was defended by Claybaugh, stating Meta does not scrape data from users under the age of 18.

However, the company's transparency regarding the use of collected data has been questioned. It remains unclear when Meta began this data scraping and to what extent the collection reaches. The firm has confirmed that posts not marked as "public" are safe from future data scraping, but any previously collected data remains fair game.

Despite robust privacy regulations allowing Eu ropean users to opt out and recent Brazilian bans on utilising personal data for AI training, it remains uncertain if Meta will offer similar choices to users elsewhere.

The company's failure to offer an opt-out option to non-European users has stirred concerns about privacy rights, with concerns being raised about the possible exploitation of personal images and videos on Facebook. The push for similar privacy laws in other regions, like Australia, is now more important than ever to protect user data against such practices.

- CyberBeat