Instagram users are afraid that Meta will train its AI tool on their data. This first surfaced earlier in the year. Now, thousands of users are sharing a post to try to prevent this titled “Goodbye Meta AI”. This includes celebrities like Ashley Tisdale, Jonny Bairstow and Julianne Moore.

In fact, this post won’t do anything. It’s just a revamped version of an earlier post that was also ineffective.

The good news is that, although this AI training will now go ahead in the UK, there will be changes to reflect an intervention by the ICO. As it starts introducing this, Meta will notify users of how to opt out. Any non-public posts will be excluded automatically. Everything else can be excluded by 3 clicks on a form plus your email address, apparently.

So, look out for a notification. Expect LinkedIn to adopt a similar process.

What next?

AI is here to stay and genAI will need to continue to be trained. If you’re a provider of AI, you’ll need to clear your data sources to avoid legal complications later. If you’re a customer of AI, you’ll want to get appropriate promises in the terms of use from your provider. If you’re a user of social media, look out for a notification and take action!

If you need advice, contact me at +44 20 3824 9748 or fjennings@hcrlaw.com.