Meta has announced that it will begin training its AI models on public content from Facebook and Instagram users in the European Union, a move that was initially put on hold due to regulatory pressure and data privacy concerns. The company will start training its AI models on users' content in the EU this week, using public posts and comments to improve its language understanding and generation capabilities.

The decision comes after Meta AI was launched in the EU last month, with limited features and functionality. The company had previously faced resistance in the EU due to the bloc's strict privacy laws, particularly the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which requires a clear legal basis for processing personal data to train AI models.

In June 2024, Meta announced that it would pause plans to train its AI systems using user data in the EU and UK, following pushback from the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC). The DPC regulates Meta in the EU and was acting on behalf of several data protection authorities across the bloc. However, in September 2024, Meta restarted efforts to train its AI systems using public posts from its UK user base, and has now expanded this to the EU.

According to Meta, users in the EU will start receiving in-app and email notifications this week, explaining that their public data and interactions with Meta AI will be used to train the company's models. The notifications will include a link to a form that allows users to opt out of their data being used, and Meta has stated that it will honor all objection forms it has already received, as well as newly submitted ones.

It's worth noting that Meta has emphasized that it does not use private messages, nor public data from users under the age of 18 in the EU, to train its models. The company has also stated that it believes it has a responsibility to build AI that is not just available to Europeans, but is actually built for them, taking into account the diverse nuances and complexities of European communities.

Meta's decision to train its AI models on public EU content is not without precedent. Companies like Google and OpenAI have already used data from European users to train their AI models, and Meta is following in their footsteps. However, the move is likely to be closely watched by regulators, who have been scrutinizing the use of personal data to train AI models.

In fact, the DPC is not moving on entirely from scrutinizing how Large Language Model creators are training their AI services. Last week, the regulator announced it was investigating xAI's training of Grok, highlighting the ongoing regulatory pressure on companies using AI models.

As the use of AI models continues to grow, the debate around data privacy and regulatory oversight is likely to intensify. Meta's decision to train its AI models on public EU content is a significant development in this space, and one that will be closely watched by industry observers and regulators alike.