Facebook will use your data for AI training, unless you opt-out

Meta is notifying its users currently on Facebook about a privacy-impacting change that will to into effect on June 26, 2024.

The company says that it is expanding “AI at Meta experiences” to the user’s region. AI refers to the “collection of generative AI features and experiences” at Meta. It includes Meta AI and AI Creative Tools according to the notification.

All Facebook users are opted-in automatically. Those who do not want their data to be used for AI training need to opt-out. This opt-out is not straightforward and it appears to be a deliberate decision by Meta.

A click on the right to object link in the notification opens the Object to Your Information Being Used for AI at Meta page.

The page offers information on the data that Meta plans to use for AI training and the data that it won’t use. In a nutshell, public data, for instance posts or photos, will be used. Private data, including private messages, won’t be used.

For the opt-out, it is necessary to provide the following information:

• Country of residence.
• Email address.
• Writing an essay on “how this processing impacts you”.

There is also one optional text field that users can fill out to provide additional information.

Meta processes the information and the notification sounds as it if can accept or decline the request. Meta writes:

If your objection is honored, it will be applied going forward.

This is not the end of it though. Meta sends a confirmation code to the email address. This code needs to be entered into a form on the Facebook website to confirm the email address.

Meta then says that it will review the submission as soon as possible. It took less than a minute to receive the answer:

Hi Martin,

We’ve reviewed your request and will honor your objection. This means your request will be applied going forward.

If you want to learn more about generative AI, and our privacy work in this new space, please review the information we have in Privacy Center.

facebook.com/privacy/genai

This inbox cannot accept incoming messages. If you send us a reply, it won’t be received.

Thanks,
Privacy Operations

In case you are wondering what I wrote in the required text field. It was “I object to the use of my data for the training of AI at Meta”

Whether Meta is analyzing user requests with AI is unclear, but it seems very unlikely that a human processed the request in less than a minute after sending it.

If someone could try and write nonsense in the field, we’d know for sure.

What about you? Do you mind if your public data is used for AI training?