Meta's new business terms could let it train AI on news sites
Legal experts say the update may let Meta crawl linked websites and use them for AI, though Meta denies any change.
Money#03
Oct 30
When the new terms take effect
Image: Ars Technica
Oct 30When the new terms take effect
The short version
- Meta is updating its commercial terms, and the changes take effect on October 30.
- The new terms say Meta may use bots and crawlers to access websites associated with business accounts and train its products on that content.
- Businesses cannot opt out, and those that refuse may stop using Meta's products for business purposes.
- Meta says there is no change to how it uses web crawlers and that robots.txt files still apply.
Why it matters
The terms could give Meta access to news content that would otherwise cost millions of dollars in licensing, according to one attorney. Legal experts say it is unclear whether a court would enforce the language. For developers and AI companies, the case shows how contract terms may be used to gather training data.
“permission to Meta to train AI on any content from their sites”