TLDR:
- Meta has been feeding its AI with all text and photos publicly posted by adult Facebook and Instagram users since 2007.
- Users outside the EU have no ability to opt out of this AI training.
Meta has acknowledged that all text and photos that adult Facebook and Instagram users have publicly published since 2007 have been fed into its artificial intelligence models. The company’s global privacy director initially denied these claims but later admitted to it during a local government inquiry. Meta’s privacy center confirms using public posts and comments to train generative AI models, but the company has been vague about its data collection practices and how far back it goes.
Australian users, along with billions of others worldwide, have no option to opt out of this AI training unless they set their posts to private, which will prevent future scraping but not delete existing data. Unlike European users who have privacy regulations in place, users outside the EU do not have this choice. Meta’s lack of transparency and data collection practices have raised concerns about privacy and the exploitation of user data.