Meta Faces EU Backlash Over AI Model Data Usage

A Meta plan to utilize individual information to prepare its artificial intelligence (AI) models without seeking consent was criticized by advocacy group NOYB on last Thursday. NOYB called on security enforcers across Europe to stop such use.

NOYB encouraged national privacy watchdogs to act instantly. It said recent changes in Meta’s privacy approach, which came into force on June 26, would permit it to utilize years of personal posts, private pictures, or online tracking information for the Facebook owner’s AI technology.

The promotion group said it had filed 11 complaints against Meta and asked data security specialists in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, and Spain to launch an urgent procedure due to the imminent changes.

Meta rejected NOYB’s feedback and referred to a May 22 blog, which said it uses freely accessible online and authorized data to train AI, as well as data that individuals have shared freely on its products and services.

However, a message sent to Facebook users said Meta may still prepare data about individuals who do not utilize its products and administrations nor have an account if they appear in a picture or are mentioned in posts or captions shared by a user.

”We are sure that our approach complies with security laws, and our approach is steady with how other tech companies are creating and progressing their AI encounters in Europe (including Google and Open AI),” a spokesperson said. Meta faces EU backlash over its Artificial Intelligence model data usage practices.

NOYB has already recorded a few complaints against Meta and other Big Tech companies over charged breaches of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which debilitates fines up to 4% of a company’s total global turnover for violations.

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Meta has already cited an authentic interest in utilizing users’ information to prepare and create its generative AI models and other AI devices, which can be shared with third parties.

NOYB author Max Schrems said in an articulation that Europe’s best court had already ruled on this issue in 2021.

“The European Court of Justice (CJEU) has already made it clear that Meta has no ’legitimate interest’ to supersede users’ right to information protection when it comes to advertising,” he said.

”Yet the company is attempting to utilize the same arguments to prepare an undefined ’AI model.’ It appears that Meta is once again blatantly overlooking the judgments of the CJEU,” Schrems said, including that opting out was amazingly complicated.

”Shifting the duty to the client is totally foolish. The law requires Meta to get opt-in consent, not to give a hidden and misleading opt-out form,” Schrems said, adding: ”If Meta needs to utilize your information, they have to inquire for your authorization. Instead, they made clients beg to be excluded”.