Meta utilizes public photos and posts from Facebook and Instagram to educate its artificial intelligence. European users can choose to opt out of having their content scraped in bulk, but Australian users do not have this option, as discovered by a parliamentary committee.
The parent company of Facebook and Instagram halted the launch of its AI products in Europe in July due to GDPR privacy regulations. Meta was instructed to cease training large language models on European user data due to privacy concerns and gave European users the choice to opt out.
During a Labor inquiry into AI adoption in Australia, Senator Tony Sheldon questioned Meta executives on why the opt-out option had not been extended to Australian users.
Melinda Claybaugh, Meta’s director of privacy policy, explained that this only applies to public posts and only to individuals over 18. She did not confirm whether Australian users would be offered a similar opt-out option in the future.
Greens senator David Shoebridge pointed out that Australians would need to set their posts to private when initially using Facebook due to the scraping of public posts by Meta.
According to Shoebridge, Meta scrapes every public post shared by Australians on Instagram and Facebook, dating back to 2007, unless the posts are set to private.
Senator Sheldon expressed concerns over millions of Australians unknowingly having their content used to train AI models without consent. He emphasized the need for action against tech companies and corporations who disregard privacy rights.
Source: www.theguardian.com
