Meta to start training AI models in public content in the EU

Postpone announced On Monday that it is going to train AI models in public content, such as positions and comments on Facebook and Instagram, in the EU, having previously stopped plans to do so in response to regulatory pressure due to privacy concerns. The company will start training its AI in users’ content in the EU this week, he said. Users’ interactions with Meta AI will also be used to train their models.

The announcement comes after a limited version of the Meta AI launched in the EU last month, long after its US debut and other world markets.

While META has trained its AI in US content content for years, it has faced EU resistance due to strict BLOC privatization laws, in particular the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which requires a clear legal basis for processing personal data for AI models.

Meta said in June 2024 that it would cease to plan to start training AI systems that uses user data in the EU and the United Kingdom after the Irish Data Protection Committee (DPC). DPC regulates the META in the EU and acted on behalf of several data protection authorities across the block. In September 2024, Meta said that it rebooted efforts to train AI systems using public positions from its users’ base in the United Kingdom.

Fast forward to the present day. Meta has announced that it will do so with public positions from the EU users base.

“Last year, I delayed the training of our large language models using public content, while regulatory authorities clarified the legal requirements,” Meta said in his blog. “We welcome the opinion provided by EDPB in December, which confirmed that our initial approach has tackled our legal obligations. Since then, we have been constructively involved with IDPC and are looking forward to continuing the full benefits of genetic AI to Europe.

Starting this week, EU users will begin to receive in -application and email notifications to explain that Meta will start using public data and interactions with Meta AI to train its models. These notifications will include a link in a form that will allow users to be excluded from the data used. Meta says it will honor all the forms of objection it has already received, as well as the newcomers.

Meta notes that it does not use private messages or public data from users under the age of 18 in the EU to train its models.

“We believe we have the responsibility to build AI which is not only available to Europeans, but it is actually built for them,” Meta says. “That is why it is so important for AI genetic models to be trained in various data to understand the incredible and different shades and complexities that are European communities.

Meta says it follows the example set by companies such as Google and Openai, and both have already used data from European users to train AI models.

In the meantime, DPC is not entirely moving from examining how large language designers are training their AI services. Last week, the regulatory authority announced that it was investigating Grok’s XAI training.