Meta deletes provision after experts flag ‘broad’ scraping permissions for AI training

Meta recently removed a provision from its commercial terms of use that suggested it could scrape content, including from news sites, to train its AI models. The provision, which was added earlier in the day, faced criticism from legal experts who argued it would have allowed Meta to use content from websites without restriction and override any blocking instructions in robots.txt files.

In response to the backlash, a Meta spokesperson clarified that the deleted provision applied only to Meta's ads and business products, and did not change how the company uses web crawlers to gather content. The spokesperson emphasized that this change in terms does not grant Meta new rights to use content from websites, and content owners can still use robots.txt to signal their preferences.

This incident is part of an ongoing trend of tech companies quietly revising their privacy policies and terms of service to allow them to use customer data for AI training or licensing purposes.