Meta told it can’t train AI with Brazilian data

Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta will face daily fines if it uses Brazilian citizens’ data to train its AI model.

Brazilian data privacy watchdog, the National Data Protection Authority (ANPD), has fined Meta 50,000 reais ($9,000) daily if it continues to pump the country’s citizens’ data into its AI model.

According to ANPD, the new measures are meant to combat Meta’s privacy policy updates, which allow the company to use user content to improve its generative AI models.

“Such treatment could impact a substantial number of people, since in Brazil Facebook alone has around 102 million active users,” the ANPD said.

The agency said its assessment of Meta’s new policy revealed that the company did not provide the necessary information to inform users that their data would be harvested to train AI.

In June, EU watchdogs hit Meta with several complaints over the use of personal data, such as personal photos, online tracking data, and posts to train AI models.