Meta Removes Language That Raised Concerns About Web Scraping for AI Training
Meta recently updated its commercial terms of use, which initially included a provision allowing the company to scrape content from websites associated with Meta business accounts and potentially train its AI models using that data. Legal experts raised concerns about this clause as it could have enabled broad web scraping activities without clear consent or compensation for publishers. However, after public feedback and scrutiny, Meta removed the controversial language. The company clarified in a statement that the updated terms only applied to ads and business products and did not alter how its web crawlers operate. Meta emphasized there was no change in their crawling practices despite earlier concerns raised by legal experts and industry observers. This development comes amid ongoing lawsuits against AI companies, including Meta, over alleged copyright infringement issues related to training data usage for AI models.