Meta

Building AI Technology for the UK in a Responsible and Transparent Way

Takeaways

  • We will begin training for AI at Meta using public content shared by adults on Facebook and Instagram in the UK over the coming months.
  • This means that we can bring AI at Meta products to the UK much sooner, and that our generative AI models will reflect British culture, history and idiom.
  • We’ve incorporated regulatory feedback to ensure our approach is even more transparent.

We will begin training for AI at Meta using public content shared by adults on Facebook and Instagram in the UK over the coming months. This means that our generative AI models will reflect British culture, history, and idiom, and that UK companies and institutions will be able to utilise the latest technology. We’re building AI at Meta to reflect the diverse communities around the world and we look forward to launching it in more countries and languages later this year.

Since we paused training our generative AI models in the UK to address regulatory feedback, we’ve engaged positively with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and welcome the constructive approach that the ICO has taken throughout these discussions. This clarity and certainty will help us bring AI at Meta products to the UK much sooner. We welcome the ICO’s guidance supporting Meta’s implementation of the legal basis of ‘Legitimate Interests’, which can be a valid legal basis for using certain first party data to train generative AI models for our AI at Meta features and experiences.

Additional Transparency

We do not use people’s private messages with friends and family to train for AI at Meta, and we do not use information from accounts of people in the UK under the age of 18. We’ll use public information – such as public posts and comments, or public photos and captions – from accounts of adult users on Instagram and Facebook to improve generative AI models for our AI at Meta features and experiences, including for people in the UK. 

From next week, adults based in the UK who use Facebook and Instagram will start receiving in-app notifications to explain what we’re doing, including how they can access an objection form at any time to object to their data being used to train our generative AI models.  We won’t contact people who have already objected as we’ll continue to honour their choice.

While our original approach was more transparent than our industry counterparts, we’ve incorporated feedback from the ICO to make our objection form even simpler, more prominent and easier to find. We’ll honour all objection forms already received, as well as new objection forms submitted.