BBrazil’s national data protection authority has ordered Meta to stop using data from the country to train its AI models.
Meta’s current privacy policy allows the company to use data from its platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, to train its artificial intelligence models. However, this practice will no longer be allowed in Brazil after the national data protection authority gave the company five days to change its policy on Tuesday.
Brazil said the company will need to confirm it has stopped using the data or face a daily non-compliance fine of US$50,000 (nearly US$9,000), citing “the imminent risk of serious and irreparable harm or difficult to repair fundamental systems.” rights of affected data subjects.”
Meta said it was “disappointed” with the Brazilian authority’s decision, saying it was a “setback for innovation”.
“AI training is not exclusive to our services, and we are more transparent than many of our industry peers who have used public content to train their models and products,” the company told TIME on Wednesday following the AI decision. Brazilian authority.
The decision follows a report published in June by Human Rights Watch, which found that a popular dataset of images taken from online sources used to train image models, made by German nonprofit LAION, contained identifiable images of Brazilian children, the which, according to the report, puts them at risk of deep fakes or other forms of exploitation. Human Rights Watch claims to have found 170 photos of children from at least 10 Brazilian states by analyzing less than 0.0001 percent of the images in the dataset.
Brazil is one of Meta’s largest markets, with more than 112 million Facebook users only. In June, at a conference in the South American country, Meta revealed new AI tools for companies on its WhatsApp platform.
The Brazilian authority said that users were not sufficiently warned about the changes and that the cancellation process was “not very intuitive”. Meta maintains that its approach complies with local privacy laws and that it will continue to respond to queries from Brazilian authorities.
Brazil’s decision to block Meta from providing user data to its AI models follows a similar reaction in Europe. Last month, Meta delayed the launch of its AI services and halted plans to train its models on EU and UK data after receiving a complaint from the Irish privacy regulator. Meta is expected to move forward with training in the US, which does not have federal online privacy protections.
See more information: Meta faces Norwegian outcry over plans to train AI on images and user posts
This is not the first time that Meta has come into conflict with Brazilian authorities. In February, the company was prevented from using its name in Brazil due to confusion with another company. Successful goal knocked down the decision in March.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
