Meta’s new terms may allow it to train AI on news sites for free

Meta’s new terms appear to give it permission to crawl and scrape websites “associated” with the businesses that use its platforms — including online publishers, according to a report from Nieman Lab. The new terms, which go into effect on October 30th, say Meta can use this outside content to “develop, improve, research,” and “train” its AI products.

The new policy applies to business accounts that promote their content across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. As pointed out by Nieman Lab, these terms seem to allow Meta to bypass a licensing agreement and train its AI models on content posted by online publishers. Meta has followed OpenAI in striking AI licensing deals with CNN, Fox News, USA Today, and People Inc., but these terms could give the company access to a much broader swath of content: