Meta, targeted by complaints in 11 European countries, is suspending its plan to use the personal data of its users in an AI program, the Irish regulator (DPC) said in a press release on Friday.
“Meta is suspending plans to train its extended language model using public content shared by adults on Facebook and Instagram in the EU/EEA,” the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) announced. , acting on behalf of the European Union (EU).
Meta, who could not immediately be reached, had been targeted since last week by the Austrian association Noyb, which had asked the authorities to intervene “urgently” to prevent the implementation of this new confidentiality policy. , scheduled for June 26.
“We welcome this development, but we will monitor it closely,” said the head of the Viennese NGO, Max Schrems, in a press release. “So far, there has been no official change to Meta’s privacy policy, which would make this commitment legally binding,” he added.
Noyb therefore does not withdraw the complaints at this stage.
Problems with the use of personal data
If certain public data is already used to train generative AI models, Meta wanted, according to the Austrian association, to go further and “completely take” all the data of its billions of users collected since 2007.
The goal: to use it as part of an “experimental AI technology without any limits”, affirmed Noyb, without requesting the consent of the Internet user, although required by the reference European regulation on data protection ( GDPR).
The Noyb association (for “None of your business”) is at the origin of numerous complaints against web giants.
In the case of Meta alone, its actions led to “administrative fines of more than 1.5 billion euros”, she recalls.
