Facebook is secretly using YOUR data to train its AI – but you can stop it instantly with hidden setting
META-OWNED Facebook has introduced a 'kill switch' that lets users decide if they want their data to be used for the the tech titan's generative AI.
Inside Facebook's Help Centre, users can access a form that asks Meta to delete, inspect, or edit third-party-sourced information about themselves that may be fed into artificial intelligence (AI) to train it.
Amid the rise of machine intelligence, tech companies are aiming to create the most sophisticated, world leading AI, and are therefore on the hunt for troves of training data.
The decision to provide an opt-out follows a joint statement from a consortium of global data protection agencies last week.
They urged against data scraping and sought more protection of people's privacy in relation to Meta, Google-owner Alphabet and Microsoft.
Names, work details, and even contact information in a public blog post could be swept up in data scraped by Meta for training, data that a model could late regurgitate to other people.
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It's important to note that the data being used is already "publicly available on the internet or licensed sources," according to a Meta blog post.
This kind of information can represent some of the “billions of pieces of data” used to train generative AI models that “use predictions and patterns to create new content," the company said.
From today, people can limit that data's spread.
However, the form doesn’t account for data on Facebook properties, such as Facebook comments and Instagram photos.
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Access to the form is also dependant on what jurisdictions people live in.
"Depending on where people live, they may be able to exercise their data subject rights and object to certain data being used to train our AI models," a Meta spokesperson said.
"They can submit an objection form to us through the Privacy Centre ."
The form appears to comply with EU regulations.
This means that Facebook users in the UK and US may not be privy to the same kinds of data protections as people in the EU.
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