According to Cointelegraph, Meta will start utilizing publicly shared content from adult users in the UK on Facebook and Instagram to train its artificial intelligence models. The company will leverage publicly available information, such as posts, comments, photos, and captions from adult users on both platforms.
Meta emphasized that it is building AI to reflect diverse communities globally and plans to expand its AI initiatives to more countries and languages later this year. The company clarified that it does not use information from accounts of individuals under the age of 18 in the UK.
In July, Meta paused its AI releases in the European Union following orders from the Irish Data Protection Commission to halt its AI assistant rollout due to data privacy concerns. Meta asserts that it uses data from Facebook and Instagram users with their consent and provides an opt-out option.
UK-based adults on Facebook and Instagram will receive in-app notifications detailing Meta’s data usage practices and offering an option to object to their data being used for AI training. Meta stated that it will honor all objection forms already received and any new ones submitted.
The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), the supervisory authority for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), has been increasing its oversight. On September 12, it launched a cross-border investigation into Google Ireland Limited to determine if Google complied with EU data protection laws while developing its artificial intelligence model.
The investigation will focus on the use of EU citizens’ personal data in training Google’s Pathways Language Model 2 (PaLM2), an advanced language model introduced on May 10, 2023, featuring enhanced multilingual, reasoning, and coding abilities.
The DPC also investigated the social media platform X, concluding the investigation after X agreed to meet the required compliance standards. On September 4, X agreed to stop using personal data from users in the EU and European Economic Area (EEA) for training its artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok.