Meta Backtracks on Clause Allowing Use of Business Content for AI Training
Meta removed a clause from its commercial terms that granted it the right to use business account content and links to train its products, with the updated terms remaining in effect as of October 30.
Meta has removed a clause from its commercial terms that granted it the right to use domain and link content from business accounts to develop and train its products, in a move that appears to be a reversal of wording that sparked widespread controversy.
Legal experts and the Nieman Lab had warned that the old wording could give Meta legal cover to crawl websites and collect their data to train artificial intelligence systems.
Meta stated that the consolidated crawling terms apply only to its advertisements and commercial products, that the behavior of its crawler has not changed, and that the deleted clause did not expand the scope of data collection.
Despite this modification, the updated terms remain effective as of October 30, meaning that the issue of using content for AI training will remain a subject of debate among platforms, publishers, and lawmakers.
What Do These Terms Mean?
Crawling: A process in which an automated program reads website pages and automatically collects their content to build indexes or train systems.
Terms of Service: The contract between the platform and the user that defines what is permitted and forbidden when using the service.
AI Model Training: Feeding the model large amounts of text so it learns patterns and can generate answers.
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