In 2024, you can’t read anything without seeing some element of AI, or artificial intelligence mentioned. It may be called AI, or Generative AI (GenAI if you need to shorten everything), but it is essentially a way of asking a computer to create content for you. Over the last 2 years alone, the quality and utility of these GenAI programs have increased to the point where a few sentences (or prompts) can generate paragraphs or texts, intricate digital images or even fully rendered videos.
One of the ethical arguments with AI has been the transparency around what data is used to train the models that allow them to create these outputs. Credit where it’s due, Meta has announced that they will be using content generated by users (text, images and video) to train their AI solution. Unfortunately for users with privacy concerns, Meta has opted to automatically use this data without additional consent.
Does this mean your data has to be used for training Meta AI? Not quite. For users living in areas with robust data protection regulations (thanks, GDPR) you have the legal right to object to your data being processed at any given point. Although this right is not absolute, it feels like Meta would have a large battle on their hands to not honour these objections given that they have been fined previously for mishandling user data in Europe.
So if you would like to opt out of Meta AI using your content to train their AI, you CAN log an objection with them. Is it easy to object? Yes, if you can find the right form. I’m not saying that Meta makes it deliberately difficult to opt out, but I don’t think anyone would disagree that it could be more upfront.
Path to the objection form (from Facebook a desktop computer as the setting is even more difficult to find on a mobile device):
Although this link may change in the future, I’ll post the direct link to the opt-out form from Facebook specifically below.
Link straight to the objection form: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/6359191084165019