Meta may use sweeping new commercial TOS to avoid millions in AI licensing fees
Ars Technica
1w · 9 min
Meta “streamlined” its commercial TOS. Legal experts warn it’s an AI power grab.
Meta “streamlined” its commercial TOS. Legal experts warn it’s an AI power grab.
Legal experts are sounding alarms that Meta will soon update its commercial terms to require business accounts to allow Meta to train AI on their linked website content, not just their social media posts.
Kicking in on October 30, the TOS update won’t allow businesses to opt out, instead suggesting that businesses stop using Meta services if they won’t agree to let Meta bots freely crawl their linked content.
As Nieman Lab reported Thursday, this will affect all business accounts but is particularly shocking for news publishers who could perhaps charge Meta millions in licensing fees to continually access their articles for AI training. Currently news organizations are fighting a battle with OpenAI over whether such training without licensing is fair use, and Meta’s terms seemingly risk granting it sweeping permissions, no matter which way the court leans.
“While journalism isn’t the only industry that will be affected by this update, virtually every news organization has at least one Meta business account, including Nieman Lab,” the lab said.…
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