Your Public Facebook Posts Are Training Meta’s AI Without You Even Knowing

Have you ever wondered how tech giants are training their powerful AI models these days? It turns out your public Facebook and Instagram posts may have been fed to AI without your consent for a while now. Now you’re probably thinking—wait, how much of my stuff have they taken without me knowing? And is there a way to stop them from using more or is it too late to opt out at this point?

According to ABC News, Meta, the tech giant behind Facebook and Instagram, has been quietly using our public posts and images to train its AI models for over 15 years—since 2007.

The revelation came to light during an Australian government investigation, where Meta’s global privacy director, Melinda Claybaugh, initially denied the allegations but eventually confirmed the practice under persistent questioning.

What’s particularly unsettling is the lack of transparency around this practice. Meta hasn’t been forthcoming about when they started this data collection or how long it’s been going on. They’ve only recently confirmed that setting posts to private will prevent future data scraping, but what about all those years of public posts? For many of us who joined these platforms in our teens or early twenties, the thought that our youthful indiscretions might be training AI is, frankly, unnerving.

Even more concerning is the situation for users who were minors when they started posting. While Meta claims it doesn’t collect data from users under 18, it’s unclear how it handles accounts that were created by minors but are now adult accounts. This gray area raises serious questions about consent and data protection for young users.

According to a public release by Meta, it is leaning on something called “Legitimate Interests” as the legal basis for using public content to train AI. What this means, in simpler terms, is that they believe using your public posts to improve their AI services can be justified as a reasonable business need.

It’s worth noting that this is a legally recognized concept in data protection law, specifically under a data protection regulation called GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), so Meta isn’t flying blind here. But, it’s still a bit of a gray area—one that might not sit well with everyone, especially when you think about how much of our lives we share online, knowingly or not.

Now, if you’re not keen on the idea of your family vacation photos or witty story updates contributing to Meta’s AI empire, you do have a say in the matter.

You Can Opt Out of AI Training, but the Process Is Not Always Straightforward

Opting out of AI training should be easy, but it isn’t—especially if you live outside the EU. Meta does not guarantee that it will allow users to opt-out, but it does say it will “review objection requests in accordance with relevant data protection laws”.

If you live in the European Union, consider yourself lucky. Thanks to GDPR, you have the right to object to how your data is used and Meta is required to honor your request. All you have to do is fill in the “Object to your information being used for AI at Meta” form with your information using Facebook or Instagram.

The form optionally requires you to explain how Meta’s data processing affects you. You can simply state that you wish to exercise your right under data protection law to object to your personal data being processed. Enter your email address, and you should soon receive both an email and a notification on your Facebook account confirming if your request has been successful.

However, for those in the United States or outside the EU, where privacy laws are far less stringent, the path to opting out is more convoluted. The option to block Meta from using your public posts, comments, and even photos to train its AI isn’t directly available. Instead, you have to take a few extra steps that feel more like a workaround than a solution.

To start, if you’re worried about your data being scooped up for AI training, the first thing you can do is make sure your posts aren’t set to Public. So, by setting your audience to Friends or something more private, you can at least prevent new posts from being swept into Meta’s data collection.

You can also set your Facebook account to private to minimize the risk as much as possible. Instagram also lets you change your account to private.

But what about the data Meta has already gathered? Here’s where things get trickier. You can navigate through Meta’s Help Center to fill out a form titled “Data Subject Rights for Third Party Information Used for AI at Meta.” This form gives you three options: you can request access to your personal information used by Meta to build or improve its AI, ask for its deletion, or raise a concern about your personal information popping up as a response from Meta’s AI.

But Meta doesn’t make any guarantees—it will review each request based on local laws, meaning there’s no universal assurance that your data will be wiped clean. It’s not an opt-out solution per se, but at least it gives you more control over what happens to your data.

When I think about all this, I can’t help but wonder how different things might have been if we’d known way back when that our posts could eventually train AI. So, next time you’re about to hit that Post button, maybe take a moment to consider—are you comfortable with your words and images potentially becoming fodder for the next big AI breakthrough?