Protest against Meta's AI training with user data

Starting June 26, Meta plans to use posts, photos and captions from Instagram and Facebook users as training material for its AI. In a blog post, Stefano Fratta of Meta explained the approach as follows: The AI will be trained with information that reflects the different languages, geographies and cultural references of the people in Europe who will use it. The data protection organization Noyb has filed complaints in eleven countries, including Germany. Meta's approach violates the GDPR, which requires users to actively consent before using AI. Meta's privacy policy theoretically allows any purpose of use. "All of this is extremely worrying because the personal data of around 4 billion people is at stake," said data protection activist Max Schrems. A spokesperson for Meta, however, emphasized that the company was "not the first company to do this." They were simply following the example of Google and Open AI.