Digital rights NGO Noyb filed 11 complaints across Europe over changes in Meta’s privacy policy allowing it to use posts and images to train its artificial intelligence (AI) model.
Noyb, founded by Austrian activist and lawyer Max Schrems, filed some of the most serious privacy complaints in the EU on Thursday (6 June), according to Euractiv.
The company is demanding a ruling from 11 data protection authorities in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, and Spain before the changes come into force on 26 June.
However, Meta is “confident” that it complies with EU privacy laws. The statement said Meta “develops AI responsibly” before submitting it to the EU and the UK, and uses publicly available information.
This is the latest step in the battle over what data can be used to train AI models. Generative artificial intelligence, such as chatbots (ChatGPT) and image generators (Midjourney), reportedly use vast amounts of data, often extracted from the internet without user consent, to train models that can then generate content.
Private data protection
The use of personal data is governed by GDPR, the EU’s most important data privacy regulation. It can also allow companies to do so if they have a “legitimate interest.”
Users should be informed about the use of their personal data for legitimate purposes. Changes to Meta’s privacy policy will allow the company to collect user posts from Facebook, Instagram and other meta-platforms to train such generative artificial intelligence models.
Personal messages between individuals are not included in the policy. Messages to businesses are also not included, Meta said.
According to Noyb, this includes information back to 2007. Publicly available information is still covered by data protection law, as the European Data Protection Supervisor has repeatedly stated. The changes are “particularly worrying,” as they affect “the personal data of about four billion Meta users, which will be used for experimental technology essentially without limit.”
