Facebook ‘using your info to train secret AI systems’ – experts urge users to fill in ‘well-hidden’ Meta form to stop it
META may be using your personal information to train its artificial intelligence tools.
The Facebook and Instagram owner has billions of monthly active users at its disposal. However, they double as a convenient dataset for generative AI training.
The company’s latest model, aptly named Meta AI, is billed as “an intelligent assistant that is capable of complex reasoning, following instructions, visualizing ideas, and solving nuanced problems”.
Meta AI can hold a conversation, create an itinerary, and even generate images.
But suspicion arose in May that the company had changed its security policies in anticipation of the backlash it would receive for scraping content from social media.
One of the first people to sound the alarm was Martin Keary, the vice president of product design at Muse Group.
Keary, who is based in the United Kingdom, said he’d received a notification that the company planned to begin training its AI on user content.
Amid a wave of similar reports and the resulting backlash, Meta issued an official statement to European users.
The company made several claims. It insisted it was not training the AI on private messages, only content users chose to make public, and never pulled information from the accounts of users under 18 years old.
This is no new issue, however. An opt-out form first became available towards the end of 2023, under the name “Data Subject Rights for Third Party Information Used for AI at Meta“.
At the time, the company said its newest open-source language model, Llama 2, had not been trained on user data – so it is unclear just when the data scraping began.
And there’s a catch. While users in the UK can attempt to opt out, users in the United States – where there are no national data privacy laws – are relatively defenseless.
How to opt out
The “Data Subject Rights” form is still available, but difficult to find.
As Kaspersky’s Alexey Sadylko puts it: “The link is so well hidden it’s almost as if Meta doesn’t want you to find it.”
Head to the Settings section of your Instagram or Facebook app and navigate to the Privacy Policy. Click on the “Right to Object” link and you will be presented with the form.
Alternatively, you can find it on the new Meta Privacy Center page, under Privacy and Generative AI. (The form is linked here for your convenience.)
The form asks for information like a user’s first and last name as well as their country of residence.
However, it isn’t that straightforward. The company says it can only address your request after you demonstrate that the AI in its models “has knowledge” of you.
The form instructs users to submit prompts they fed an AI tool that resulted in their personal information being returned to them, as well as proof of that response.
There is also a disclaimer. “We don’t automatically fulfill requests sent using this form. We review them consistent with your local laws,” it reads.
The U.S. Sun reached out to Meta for comment.
Meta’s legal challenges
Several groups in Europe have taken interest in Meta’s data privacy policy.
Advocates with NOYB – European Center for Digital Rights filed complaints against the tech giant in nearly a dozen countries.
The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) subsequently issued an official request to Meta to address the lawsuits.
But the company hit back at the DPC, even naming the group in a news release.
What is Meta AI?
You may have spotted Meta AI on your social media feed - here's how it works:
Meta AI is a conversational artificial intelligence tool, also known as a chatbot.
It responds to a user’s questions in a similar fashion to competitors like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot.
Meta AI is what’s known as generative AI, so-called due to its ability to generate content. It can produced text or images in response to a user’s request.
The tool is trained on data that’s available online. It can mimic patterns commonly found in human language as it provides responses.
Meta AI appears on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, where it launches a chat when a question is sent.
“This is a step backwards for European innovation, competition in AI development and further delays bringing the benefits of AI to people in Europe,” the company lamented.
Meta insists that its approach complies with legal regulations including the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.
“We feel a responsibility to build AI that is not forced on Europeans but actually built for them,” the company wrote.
“To do that while respecting European users’ choices, we think the right thing to do is to let them know of our plans and give them the choice to tell us if they don’t want to participate.”