Meta Halts Employee Data Tracking After Sensitive Info Reportedly Exposed
Key takeaways
- Meta's controversial surveillance tool, which tracked staff's keystrokes, mouse clicks and content to train the company's AI models, didn't quite work out as planned.
- "We collectively believe that empowering individuals and communities through building responsible AI includes respecting their boundaries and privacy," the petition states.
- Business Insider reported that the software tracked apps and programs such as Gmail, GChat and Metamate, an employee AI assistant, as part of its data collection.
Meta's controversial surveillance tool, which tracked staff's keystrokes, mouse clicks and content to train the company's AI models, didn't quite work out as planned. The Model Capability Initiative, which was implemented in April and strongly opposed by staff, has been paused following an incident in which employee data became accessible to the entire company.
Over the last several weeks, more than 1,600 Meta employees, including software engineers, research scientists and designers, signed a petition calling on the company to stop collecting and repurposing employee computer data.
"We collectively believe that empowering individuals and communities through building responsible AI includes respecting their boundaries and privacy," the petition states. "Any approach to AI that relies on intrusive, coercive, non-consensual data collection contradicts that principle."