Last month, Meta announced that it was going to expand its AI services worldwide, and the company informed users in Europe that it would use their public information to train its AI services starting June 26.
Notices sent to Facebook and Instagram users in Europe informing them that their public posts could be used to train AI services, including Meta’s chatbot, sparked privacy concerns and backlash as users wondered where the policy change will be implemented.
But for those living in the United States, where online privacy laws aren’t as strict, Meta AI already uses public posts to train its AI. It’s unclear where else Meta could expand the program.
Privacy watchdogs have raised concerns about data usage and a lack of specifics about what Meta will do with people’s information. However, 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 need to know about Meta’s AI chatbot and how you can opt out of having your information shared.
Meta’s chatbot is its answer to ChatGPT.
Meta AI is an AI-powered smart assistant software available in apps like Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram — it can be used in feeds, chats and search. Similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa, it is designed to respond to almost any prompt the user gives it.
For example, you might ask: Who is the greatest tennis player of all time?
“The eternal debate!” Meta AI answered this question. “Although opinions may differ, 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 new and powerful large language model, an AI technology that can conduct conversations and generate images.
The chatbot learns from Instagram and Facebook posts.
The announcement to European users sparked backlash on Reddit, Tiktok and Twitter, including in the US, where Meta didn’t have to notify users – and so users might not have realized – that it was training its AI with the public their posts.
When asked, the smart assistant said it learned from “a huge text dataset” online. The information came from websites, books, articles and research papers. But some of the data also came from social media posts — including Facebook and Instagram posts, Meta AI said, adding that its training came from “anonymized and aggregated” data.
On a page about its AI capabilities, Meta said that photos and text from public posts on Instagram and Facebook were used to train its AI models, but that private posts and private messages were not. User prompts for AI features are also fair game.
A spokesperson for Meta — and its chatbot — didn’t elaborate on exactly how the public information is used beyond “building and improving AI experiences.” It’s unclear when Meta began removing 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 stop Meta AI from learning from your public social media posts as there are no specific privacy laws.
“While we do not currently have an opt-out feature, we have built in-platform tools that allow users to delete their personal information from conversations with Meta AI in our apps,” Meta said in a statement on Friday.
Those using Meta apps within the European Union, Britain, the European Economic Area and Switzerland were notified that they could opt out, according to Meta.
Here’s how to opt out (for those in Europe).
Visit the Meta Privacy Center from your Facebook account, click on ‘data settings’, then click on ‘Activity outside of Facebook’. 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 the opt-out.
On Instagram, users can tap “settings,” then “about,” then “privacy policy,” which will lead to information about Meta AI and how to opt out.
Is it legal for Meta AI to use my data?
According to Facebook’s legal terms, this 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, this photo may be used for other Meta products, according to the company.
In Europe, even with the Meta opt-out introduced to comply with privacy laws, watchdog groups have raised concerns about the sweeping nature of data use.
The European Digital Rights Center, 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 either be a simple chatbot, an ultra-aggressive personalized ad, or even a killer drone,” Max Schrems, president and founder of NOYB, said in a press release .
