Meta Updates Terms Allowing AI Training on Websites Associated with Business Accounts
Meta has introduced new commercial terms that grant the company permission to use automated software, such as web scrapers and crawlers, to access and index domains associated with business accounts. These updated terms, effective October 30th, state that Meta may use collected content to develop, research, and train its AI products. This move has raised concerns among legal experts and news publishers regarding the potential for Meta to bypass traditional 'robots.txt' blocking instructions used by websites to prevent scraping. While Meta spokespeople claim the update is intended to improve product information accuracy for advertising recommendations rather than targeting news sites, critics argue it could allow Meta to train AI on publisher content without licensing agreements. The policy applies to businesses using Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. Following initial backlash, Meta issued a clarification stating that the crawling terms specifically apply to its ads and business products.
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Topics: Artificial Intelligence Content Licensing Data Scraping Meta Platforms Web Crawling
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