Last month, Meta announced that it was expanding its AI services around the world, and the company informed users in Europe that it would use their public information to train its AI services starting June 26.
Notifications sent to Facebook and Instagram users in Europe, letting them know that their public posts could be used to train artificial intelligence services, including the Meta chatbot, sparked privacy concerns and backlash as users wondered where it would come in. the next policy change into effect.
But for those who live in the United States, where online privacy laws are not as strict, Meta AI has already been using public posts to train its AI. It’s unclear where else Meta AI might expand the program.
Privacy watchdogs have raised concerns about the use of data and the lack of details about what Meta will do with people’s information. But Meta says it complies with privacy laws and that the information it collects will make services more relevant to users in a given region.
Here’s what you should know about Meta’s AI chatbot and how you can opt out of having your information shared.
The Meta chatbot is your answer to ChatGPT.
Meta AI is a smart assistant software powered by artificial intelligence, available on applications such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram; can be used in feeds, chat and search. Like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Apple’s Siri, or Amazon’s Alexa, it’s designed to respond to almost any request a user gives it.
For example, you could ask: Who is the best tennis player of all time?
“The eternal debate!” Meta AI responded to that query. “Although opinions may vary, many experts and fans consider Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic to be among the greatest tennis players of all time.”
Meta AI is powered by LLaMA 3, the company’s powerful new big language model, an artificial intelligence technology that can hold conversations and create images.
The chatbot learns from Instagram and Facebook posts.
The announcement to European users sparked some negative reactions on Reddit, Tiktok, and Twitter, including in the US, where Meta was not required to notify users (and therefore users may not have noticed. realized) that he had been training his AI with his public posts.
When asked, the smart assistant said it learned from “a massive set of text data” online. The information came from websites, books, articles and research papers. But some of the data set also came from social media posts, including Facebook and Instagram posts, Meta AI said, adding that his training came from “anonymized and aggregated” data.
On a page about its generative AI features, Meta said that photos and text from public posts on Instagram and Facebook were used to train its generative AI models, but that no private posts or messages were used. User feedback on AI functions is also valid.
A spokesperson for Meta (and its chatbot) did not specify exactly how public information was used beyond “building and improving AI experiences.” It’s unclear when Meta started mining data from US-based users.
In the US, opt out by setting your account to private.
For Meta users in the US, there is no way to prevent Meta AI from learning from your public social media posts, as there are no specific privacy laws for this.
“While we currently do not have an opt-out feature, we have created tools on the platform that allow people to remove their personal information from chats with Meta AI in our apps,” Meta said in a statement on Friday.
According to Meta, those using Meta apps within the European Union, Great Britain, the European Economic Area and Switzerland were notified that they could opt out.
Here’s how to unsubscribe (for those in Europe).
Visit the Meta Privacy Center from your Facebook account, click “data settings,” and then click “off-Facebook activity.” Then select “manage your data” and disable “data sharing” as well as “AI model training.”
In EU countries, users will also see “GDPR settings”. From there, users can click “exercise my rights” and submit an opt-out request. Users must also provide a reason for opting out.
On Instagram, users can tap “settings,” then “about,” then “privacy policy,” which will take them to information about Meta AI and how to unsubscribe.
Is it legal for Meta AI to use my data?
In Facebook’s legal terms, that company says that “if you share a photo on Facebook, you give us permission to store it, copy it, and share it with others.” Depending on your settings, that photo can be used for other Meta products, according to the company.
In Europe, even with the opt-out feature introduced by Meta to comply with privacy laws, watchdog groups have raised concerns about the widespread nature of data use.
The European Center for Digital Rights, known as NOYB (None of Your Business), filed complaints in several European countries about Meta’s policy change.
“Meta doesn’t say what it will use the data for, so it could be a simple chatbot, extremely aggressive personalized advertising, or even a killer drone,” Max Schrems, president and founder of NOYB, said in a press release.
