Meta Platforms has announced that it will start using public posts by adult users and interactions with its artificial intelligence (AI) on its social media platforms to train the company’s AI models in the European Union (EU).
In a statement released this week by Meta, the company claims that the training will facilitate millions of people and businesses across Europe, and that using social media posts will help Meta’s generative AI models to understand diverse cultures and languages better.
EU users can, however, opt out of the training, which will be based on their online activity and engagements. “People based in the EU who use our platforms can choose to object to their public data being used for training purposes,” says Meta.
Formerly planned for launch in June 2024, Meta introduced its AI in the EU last month. The delay had come hot on the heels of regulatory concerns about data protection in the bloc. The company’s AI rollout in the EU was impeded by the strict regulations around data privacy and protection enforced by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) in the region.
According to Meta, it will not use private messages sent and received by adult users and public posts from accounts belonging to users under 18. Meta says Facebook and Instagram users, in particular, will start receiving in-app and email notifications this week, which will explain what kind of data the company will be using to train its AI models.
“These notifications will also include a link to a form where people can object to their data being used in this way at any time,” the statement reads. “We have made this objection form easy to find, read, and use, and we’ll honor all objection forms we have already received, as well as newly submitted ones.”
The DPC has launched an investigation into X’s use of personal data of EU users to train its AI model called Grok AI. It will focus on the processing of data comprising publicly accessible posts on X in the EU and the European Economic Area (EEA).
