Meta’s AI could still scrape news sites, legal experts say

Meta has revised its business terms to remove language suggesting it could freely train its AI models on news sites like The Verge. The original terms, which take effect on October 30th, stated that Meta could use any content from websites associated with a business account to develop, research, and train its products, potentially overriding robots.txt blocking instructions. Following backlash from the publishing industry, Meta removed the specific word “train.” However, legal experts, including James Grimmelmann of Cornell Law School and Matt Topic of Loevy & Loevy, argue that the changes are insufficient. They point out that the revised terms still allow Meta to use scraped content to develop any “business product,” and that “develop” could be interpreted broadly enough to include “train.” Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts maintains that the update is not about scraping news sites and that content owners can still use robots.txt to signal their preferences, and that the new terms do not grant rights that supersede those preferences.

(Source：The Verge)