A European advocacy organisation has rejected Meta’s idea to train its Artificial Intelligence (AI) models using the personal data of Facebook and Instagram users.
The privacy advocacy group NOYB ( None of Your Business) issued a statement on Thursday urging European data protection authorities to take action against Meta’s plans to utilise Facebook and Instagram user data for AI training.
NOYB emphasised the potential violations of the General Data Protection Regulation and called on privacy enforcers to investigate and prevent Meta from misusing personal data. The group’s statement highlights concerns over the exploitation of user’s sensitive information without their consent and the potential risk associated with AI systems being trained on vast amounts of personal data.
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Additionally, this will urge national privacy watchdogs to take quick action, citing recent changes to Meta’s privacy policy that will take effect on June 26 as permission for the company to access years’ worth of private photographs, postings, or online tracking data for the AI technology owned by Facebook.
The advocacy group said it had launched 11 complaints against Meta and asked data protection authorities in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Spain to launch an urgent procedure because of the imminent changes.
Meta Denies Data Misuse Despite NOYB Criticism
In response to NOYB’s critique of its plan, Meta has denied it and linked to a blog post from May 22 in which it claimed that it trains AI using data that is licenced and publicly accessible online, along with publicly published information on its goods and services.
Nevertheless, a notice distributed to Facebook users stated that Meta might continue to handle data about individuals who neither use its services nor have an account, provided that they appear in an image or are referenced in posts or captions shared by other users.
Max Schrems, the founder of NOYB, said in the statement that Europe’s top court had already ruled on this issue in 2021.
NOYB said it has already filed several complaints against Meta and other Big Tech companies over alleged breaches of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which threatens fines of up to 4% of a company’s total global turnover for violations.
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Data protection watchdogs add pressure to Meta and Tech Giants
Several tech platforms like Meta are coming under the radar of data protection watchdogs over their propensity to misuse the data of billions of people on their platforms. In October last year, the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) said it investigated Meta and other companies over possible data breaches based on user complaints.
The Commission claims that allegations against Meta included behavioural advertising without the data subjects’ express authorisation. It further stated that the data processing that is the investigation’s subject may have impacted some 40 million Facebook accounts in Nigeria.