Meta has confessed to the act of scraping all public Facebook and Instagram posts that have been made since 2007 in order to train its generative AI model, adding to the stark contrast in privacy when compared to Apple Intelligence.
While this admission was made during a public inquiry in Australia, the company’s statement holds true globally…
Meta’s usage of user posts to train AI systems
The company has previously acknowledged plans to utilize posts and photos for training its AI systems, yet it hadn’t previously admitted that it had been doing so for a significant number of years.
Back in June, CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled plans to embark on this, as if it were a novel initiative.
The announcement has sparked major concerns, following his assertion that the company possesses more user data than what was used to train ChatGPT – and will soon be using it to train its own AI systems. The company’s plan to leverage Facebook and Instagram posts and comments to train a competing chatbot raises concerns regarding both privacy and toxicity.
The company was legally obligated to provide opt-out options in both the EU and the UK, though even there the legality of making it an opt-out rather than an opt-in is being investigated.
No such opt-out was offered in the US, Australia, or anywhere else.
Meta now admits it has been taking place since 2007
An Australian investigation into Meta’s privacy practices has led to the company’s admission that it has been scraping public posts, photos, and comments from both Facebook and Instagram for the past 17 years.
Meta’s global privacy director Melinda Claybaugh initially denied it.
Labor senator Tony Sheldon asked whether Meta had used Australian posts dating back as far as 2007 to feed its AI products, to which Ms Claybaugh responded “we have not done that”.
But when specifically questioned, she then admitted that it was true for public posts.
Shoebridge: “The truth of the matter is that unless you have deliberately set those posts to private since 2007, Meta has simply decided that it will scrape all of the photos and all of the texts from every public post on Instagram or Facebook since 2007, unless there was a conscious decision to make them private. That’s the reality, isn’t it?”
Claybaugh: “Correct.”
Meta did not scrape the accounts of those under the age of 18, but agreed that it included photos of children posted by parents on their own accounts.
Photo by Timothy Hales Bennett on Unsplash
