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Meta fed its AI on almost everything you’ve posted publicly since 2007

The Verge · 2m

Meta has admitted to using public posts and photos from adult Facebook and Instagram users since 2007 to train its AI models. This includes content from users who may have been minors when their accounts were created. While European users can opt out due to privacy regulations, users in other regions cannot if they want to keep their posts public. Meta's global privacy director confirmed this during an Australian government inquiry, stating that only private posts are excluded from AI training. The company doesn't scrape data from users under 18, but it's unclear how it handles adult accounts created when users were minors. Critics argue that this practice exploits user data, especially children's, and call for stronger privacy laws to protect against such use.