Meta’s AI could still scrape news sites, legal experts say
Meta has tweaked its business terms to remove language suggesting that it could freely train its AI models on news sites, like The Verge - but legal experts say these changes aren't enough to address their concerns. "This does nothing to restrict the 'associated with your products or services' [language] that would let Meta scrape […]
Meta has revised its business terms to remove language suggesting it could train AI on news sites, but legal experts say the changes are insufficient to address their concerns. The updated terms, set to take effect on October 30th, initially stated that Meta could "train" its products with scraped content from websites associated with business accounts.
This could allow Meta to disregard instructions like the robots.txt file, which has historically informed scrapers, including search engines, about what they can crawl. While Meta removed this language due to backlash from the publishing industry, legal experts argue that the revised terms still allow Meta to use scraped content to develop any "business product."
This broad language could still enable Meta to train AI models, potentially circumventing publishers' preferences communicated through robots.txt. Meta maintains that its new terms are not intended to scrape news content for free and that the update does not grant it new rights that override content owners' preferences.
Written by urgent.news from The Verge's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
