Just a quick note of clarity to counter a message that’s spreading across social media, which relates to Meta reportedly looking to start using your private DMs for AI training.
Yeah, as you might expect, that’s not true.
Back in October, Meta announced a coming Privacy Policy update, which comes into effect on December 16th, which specifically focuses on the use of your Meta AI interactions for expanded data insight.
That will include some of your chat info, though as Meta clarified (repeatedly) in its announcement:
"We will soon use your interactions with Meta AI to personalize the content and ads you see, including things like posts and reels."
So, as Meta says, the expanded policy will include your interactions with Meta AI only, not your personal chats.
But even so, some have mistakenly (or not) taken this to mean that all of your DMs, in Messenger, WhatsApp, IG, will be open for Meta to mine.
Over the weekend, a video gained traction in which a creator claims that as part of the update, Meta will indeed be scanning all of your private DMs, across all of its apps, to assist in its AI training.
But to confirm, this is not correct.
As a Meta spokesperson told Snopes:
"The update mentioned in the viral rumor isn't about DMs at all, it's about how we'll use people's interactions with our AI features to further personalize their experience. We do not use the content of your private messages with friends and family to train our AIs unless you or someone in the chat chooses to share those messages with our AIs. This also isn't new, nor is it part of this Dec. 16 privacy policy update."
So if you see that post being forwarded around, with people scaremongering about Meta’s December 16th Privacy Policy update, that will open up your DMs to Meta’s AI bots, no, that’s not correct. Best not to forward that or amplify it any further.
Some people dislike Zuck and Co. and will take the opportunity to kick them, some people don’t trust Meta after past data exposures, and some are paranoid about their data being misused.
Whatever the reason, this change will not impact your private chats. Unless you call on Meta AI within the chat, then the system will access the relevant info for AI training.
So if you want to keep your chats super private, don’t ask Meta AI for its input.
You can read Meta’s full Privacy Policy update info here.
