Meta announced that it will temporarily suspend its artificial intelligence training project in Europe. This decision comes after Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) requested information in response to multiple complaints lodged by activist group European Digital Rights Center (NOYB).
This means that Meta will no longer advance its project of feeding its artificial intelligence with public information from users on Instagram and Facebook.
The statement published by the Meta page and signed by Steffan Fratta, director of global engagement at Meta says:
“We are disappointed by the request from the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), our lead regulator, on behalf of European DPAs, to delay the training of our large language models (LLM) using public content shared by adults on Facebook and Instagram, particularly as we incorporate regulatory feedback and the European DPAs have been informed since March.”
The company argues that the request from Irish regulators represents a setback for Europe in terms of innovation and competition in the field of artificial intelligence.
They assure that they had already integrated regulatory recommendations into the development of Meta AI, and that the data protection authorities of the European Union were informed about it since March.
Despite this, The company responsible for Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp is committed to continuing to work to improve the access of users in the region to AI.
“This is a step backwards for European innovation, competition in the development of AI and further delays in bringing the benefits of AI to the citizens of Europe,” said Meta.
NOYB has been happy with the pause in the launch of Meta AI in Europe. However, the group led by Max Schrems has stressed that there are still pending aspects to be addressed.
“Meta’s press release sounds a bit like ‘collective punishment.’ If any European insists on his rights, the entire continent will not receive our shiny new products. However, Meta has every option to implement AI based on valid consent, it simply chooses not to,” Schrems said in a statement.
The Austrian non-governmental organization expressed concern about Meta’s past intention to use user data, both public and non-public, collected since 2007 to develop an artificial intelligence technology whose characteristics had not yet been clearly defined.
Besides, They noted that the company had not specified from which third parties it planned to obtain such information.
As reported by The Wall Street Journal at the time, a Meta spokesperson said that “the company was confident that its approach complied with privacy laws” and was consistent with the direction other technology companies were taking to develop applications with artificial intelligence in Europe.
Meta, the company responsible for social networks such as Facebook and Instagram, announced in a statement that starting June 26, 2024, it would use the data of its users to train its generative artificial intelligence.
This measure implied that content shared on their platforms, such as posts and photos with descriptions, would be used to train their AI models. Meta indicated that it could process information from people who did not have a profile on its social networks but who appeared in other users’ posts.
Training an AI model means making a computer system learn to perform tasks based on data. During training, large amounts of collected information are used to allow the model to recognize patterns, optimize their accuracy and usefulness.
