Meta drops AI training wording from its business terms after publisher backlash

Meta has removed the line in its new commercial terms that said it could use content from websites linked to business accounts to "train" its products, The Verge reports. Legal experts quoted by Nieman Lab had read that line as letting Meta train AI on publishers' sites and override robots.txt. Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts said the crawling terms only ever applied to its ads and business products, that they do not change how Meta uses web crawlers, and that robots.txt still signals content owners' preferences. The rest of the terms still take effect on 30 October.