Meta finally admits to exploiting Aussie data for AI training: Call for privacy law reforms

Digital & Innovation: Facebook uses photos, posts and data from its adult Australian users to train AI models, Meta’s global privacy director, Melinda Claybaugh has admitted at the sixth public hearing of the Senate’s Select Committee on Adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Unlike in the European Union (EU), Australian law does not currently grant users the right to refuse consent.

Lisa Given, Professor of Information Sciences, said “Initial reports emerged in June that Facebook was using people’s posts and photos, from as far back as 2007, to train its AI tools. Facebook has now admitted this use, publicly. 

“Due to requirements of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, Facebook provides an opt-out for EU residents by completing a ‘right to object’ form. 

“At the time, both the Irish Data Protection Commission and the UK’s Information Commission asked Meta to provide more time for users to understand their privacy rights, particularly as the system would not automatically prompt users to their right to opt-out,” Professor Given explained.

Meta has recently settled a lawsuit with the state of Texas for $1.4 billion, the largest ever privacy settlement secured by a single US state, over allegations of unlawful biometric data use via its facial recognition technology.

Australia’s lack of similar legislation to the EU means that Facebook is not required to offer an opt-out option for Australian account holders. Although this type of data use may be explained and covered in the platform’s terms of service, many people do not realise that Facebook can use their data in this way. 

Professor Given added, “People may not understand the implications of how these data will be used – i.e. to train large-language models and image generators, based on sentence structures of posts and the relationships between images and captions. 

“Australia may need to require similar legislation to the EU’s GDPR in order to protect residents’ data from being used by social media companies in future.” 

The parliamentary inquiry has also scrutinised AI tools from companies like Google’s Gemini, Amazon Lex, and Microsoft’s Copilot, addressing concerns about the potential for misuse of this technology.

Dr Dana McKay, Associate Dean, Interaction, Technology and Information , said “Facebook may also have breached European law by including photos of Europeans taken by Australians. 

“Social media companies have operated on the precedent set by search companies where online information is there for the scraping. There are good historical reasons for search being this way; it basically couldn’t exist without it, and data owners were happy to exchange scraping for exposure.” 

She added, “In this case, Australian people were unaware and it’s not clear the scraping has benefited them. 

“This is a clear sign we need new privacy laws.”

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