Meta's New Terms Could Allow Free AI Training on News Sites, Sparking Publisher Concern

Meta's New Terms Raise Alarm Over Free AI Training on News Content

Meta is set to update its business terms on October 30th, a move that has sparked significant concern among online publishers and legal experts. Critics suggest the new policy could allow Meta to freely train its artificial intelligence models on content from websites associated with business accounts, potentially bypassing established blocking mechanisms and licensing agreements.

Policy Details and Scope

According to reports from Nieman Lab, Meta's updated terms appear to grant the company permission to "crawl and scrape websites 'associated' with the businesses" that utilize its platforms, including online publishers. The new policy explicitly states that Meta can use this external content to "develop, improve, research," and "train" its AI products.

The terms apply to business accounts that promote their content across Meta's various platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. The policy language authorizes Meta "to use automated software (such as web scrapers, bots, robots, spiders, crawlers, and user agents)... to access, index, cache, analyze, collect, retrieve, or crawl the domains, web pages, or URLs (and any content available through them) that are associated with your products or services." It further states that Meta "may use any content from such domains, web pages, or URLs to provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain the integrity of, the Meta Company Products, services, and features."

Concerns from Publishers and Legal Experts

Legal experts, including James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell, tell Nieman Lab that these new terms "clearly represents permission to Meta to train AI on any content from their sites and possibly to deploy some of that content, even in competition with the publishers themselves." There is particular concern that Meta could argue its commercial terms "supersede other blocking instructions," such as a site’s robots.txt file, thereby bypassing licensing agreements.

While Meta has previously struck AI licensing deals with major news organizations like CNN, Fox News, USA Today, and People Inc., these new terms could grant the company access to a significantly broader range of content without direct compensation.

Meta's Response

Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts has pushed back against these interpretations, stating, "There is no change to how Meta uses web crawlers; any suggestion to the contrary is false." Roberts maintains that "Content owners can still use robots.txt flags to indicate their preferences, as we clearly explain in our developer documentation," and claims the company is merely "consolidating" its commercial and self-serve ad terms.

Broader Implications and Ultimatum

Nieman Lab highlights a perceived contradiction, noting that Meta recently launched a "Meta One" subscription requiring businesses and creators to pay to include links in posts and reels. This means Meta has "begun charging users to post links to the same content that it will be permitted to crawl for free."

Businesses that do not agree to Meta’s updated policies face an ultimatum: they "may stop all access or use of our Products for business or commercial purposes," according to the new terms. This development underscores the ongoing tension between tech giants seeking vast amounts of data for AI training and content creators striving to protect their intellectual property and revenue streams.