Brazil Data Regulator Bans Meta From Mining Data To Train AI Models 13
Brazil's national data protection authority ruled on Tuesday that Meta must stop using data originating in the country to train its artificial intelligence models. The Associated Press reports: Meta's updated privacy policy enables the company to feed people's public posts into its AI systems. That practice will not be permitted in Brazil, however. The decision stems from "the imminent risk of serious and irreparable or difficult-to-repair damage to the fundamental rights of the affected data subjects," the agency said in the nation's official gazette. [...] Hye Jung Han, a Brazil-based researcher for the rights group, said in an email Tuesday that the regulator's action "helps to protect children from worrying that their personal data, shared with friends and family on Meta's platforms, might be used to inflict harm back on them in ways that are impossible to anticipate or guard against."
But the decision regarding Meta will "very likely" encourage other companies to refrain from being transparent in the use of data in the future, said Ronaldo Lemos, of the Institute of Technology and Society of Rio de Janeiro, a think-tank. "Meta was severely punished for being the only one among the Big Tech companies to clearly and in advance notify in its privacy policy that it would use data from its platforms to train artificial intelligence," he said. Compliance must be demonstrated by the company within five working days from the notification of the decision, and the agency established a daily fine of 50,000 reais ($8,820) for failure to do so. In a statement, Meta said the company is "disappointed" by the decision and insists its method "complies with privacy laws and regulations in Brazil."
"This is a step backwards for innovation, competition in AI development and further delays bringing the benefits of AI to people in Brazil," a spokesperson for the company added.
But the decision regarding Meta will "very likely" encourage other companies to refrain from being transparent in the use of data in the future, said Ronaldo Lemos, of the Institute of Technology and Society of Rio de Janeiro, a think-tank. "Meta was severely punished for being the only one among the Big Tech companies to clearly and in advance notify in its privacy policy that it would use data from its platforms to train artificial intelligence," he said. Compliance must be demonstrated by the company within five working days from the notification of the decision, and the agency established a daily fine of 50,000 reais ($8,820) for failure to do so. In a statement, Meta said the company is "disappointed" by the decision and insists its method "complies with privacy laws and regulations in Brazil."
"This is a step backwards for innovation, competition in AI development and further delays bringing the benefits of AI to people in Brazil," a spokesperson for the company added.
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will they really? (Score:3)
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Sure, and that is and will be a problem. Legal Juristiction doesn't help either. But if this model is taken up by the EU and other consumer friendly juristictions with agressive corporate cops then its possible to construct a genuine legal nemesis to actually trying this shit.
You could do it, but you do so at great legal peril. But this requires more powerful juristictions to follow the lead. (I'd like to see the US do this, but I doubt the political will to basically declare war on the tech bros exists yet
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Because bitter ex-employees will snitch.
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Lol, true. Good point.
Why only Meta? (Score:2)
Isn't this equally true for all these companies? They're all scraping every nock and cranny hell for leather.
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Oh, answered my own question. Reading the full article says why: Meta is the only one that has written the scraping practice into a public legal document.
Think tank of lawyer? (Score:3)
The concern about lack of privacy & being able to fish out/prompt LLMs personal info trained on people's data sounds reasonable to me. In principle, it's already been demonstrated.
Data ownership issue (Score:3)
How do you reliably determine ownership of data? The Internet is a distributed, global entity. Sure, we could start with looking at domains but that doesn't address the situation where Brazilian data is stored on non-local domains or, most importantly, non-local servers. Since there is no built-in global data ownership framework it is simply impossible from the point of view of a scraper to tell which entity owns the data.
Train AI model? (Score:2)
A theory about this.... (Score:1)
I see some pieces coming together (puts on tin foil hat). WhatsApp is by far the most popular way to communicate in Brazil and Italy. People, businesses and even the government use it for messaging and calls because it's way cheaper than traditional methods. A recent conversation with a native Brazilian revealed that WhatsApp use doesn't even count against mobile data caps there so it is, for all intents and purposes, free (which explains it's popularity). So why would the mobile providers be doing this? Ma