Meta's new AI assistant trained on Facebook, Instagram public posts - report
Fritz Jorgensen/iStock Editorial via Getty Images
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) used Facebook and Instagram posts to train parts of its new Meta AI assistant, but did not use private posts shared only with family and friends, making an effort to respect consumers' privacy, Reuters reported citing Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg.
The tech giant also did not use private chats on its messaging services as training data for the model and took steps to exclude private details from public data required for training, the company's top policy executive noted, as per the report.
"We've tried to exclude datasets that have a heavy preponderance of personal information," said Clegg.
Clegg added that a large majority of the data used by the company to train the model was available publicly.
Meta purposefully chose not to use LinkedIn content because of privacy concerns, Clegg cited as an example.
Meta developed the AI assistant using a custom model based on the large language model, or LLM, called Llama 2, which was released in July, and a new model known as Emu which generates images from text inputs, according to the report.
Meta kicked off its Connect developer event on Wednesday with a keynote address that was heavy on AI and new products, which left Wall Street firms impressed.
Tech companies including Meta, Microsoft (MSFT)-backed OpenAI and Alphabet's unit (GOOGL) (GOOG) Google have been criticized for using information from the internet without consent to train their AI models, the report noted.
Earlier this month, OpenAI was sued by authors, including George R.R. Martin and John Grisham over alleged copyright infringement. Getty Images (GETY), which earlier this week unveiled the Generative AI by Getty Images, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. against Stability AI, developers of AI image generator Stable Diffusion, for allegedly using images without consent.
OpenAI, earlier this week, introduced an update announcing that ChatGPT can now browse the internet to provide current and authoritative information and was no longer limited to data before September 2021.
Google also launched new features for its chatbot Bard under which the generative AI service can now connect to user's Google apps and services.
Generative AI services have taken the world by storm, since the launch of ChatGPT. Companies globally have introduced their own LLMs. Baidu's (BIDU) Ernie Bot, Alibaba's (BABA) Tongyi Qianwen and Tongyi Wanxiang, The Alphabet unit (GOOG) (GOOGL) Google's Bard, OpenAI's upcoming text-to-image tool DALLÂ·E 3, Meta Platforms's (META) AudioCraft, SeamlessM4T and Llama 2, are some of them.

More on Meta Platforms

Meta Platforms: Riding The AI Wave
Meta Platforms: Here's What You Don't Know About Meta
Meta Struggles To Take Off In Threads
Meta Connect event laid the 'AI foundation' for the company, Wall Street says
Meta Platforms shows off Quest 3 headset, AI updates, as the face race heats up