Meta’s AI could still scrape news sites, legal experts say
Meta has updated its business terms to remove explicit language about training AI on news sites, but legal experts argue the changes remain ambiguous. Critics suggest that broad terms regarding 'business products' could still allow Meta to scrape content despite the company's denials.
Why it matters
This reflects the ongoing tension between AI developers and content creators regarding intellectual property and data scraping rights.
Meta has tweaked its business terms to remove language suggesting that it could freely train its AI models on news sites, like The Verge — but legal experts say these changes aren’t enough to address their concerns. “This does nothing to restrict the ‘associated with your products or services’ [language] that would let Meta scrape entire sites,” James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell Law School, tells Nieman Lab.
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