Meta’s New Commercial Terms Could Let It Train AI on Business Websites

Legal experts warn that Meta is preparing to update its commercial terms to allow the company to train its AI systems on content from websites linked to business accounts—not just on social media posts.

The terms are scheduled to take effect on October 30 and would not give businesses an opt-out option. Instead, businesses that do not consent to Meta’s use of their linked website content would reportedly be advised to stop using Meta’s services.

Meta’s Terms Would Apply to Business Accounts

As the Nieman Institute reported Thursday, the change would affect all business accounts. It could be especially significant for news publishers, which may otherwise charge millions of dollars in licensing fees for continued access to their articles for AI training.

Media outlets are already battling OpenAI over whether using news articles to train AI without a license constitutes fair use. Regardless of how courts ultimately rule, Meta’s updated terms could be interpreted as granting broad permission to access and use content from linked websites.

“While journalism is not the only industry affected by this update, virtually every news organization has at least one meta-business account, including the Nieman Institute,” the institute said.

What Meta’s Updated Terms Say

In particular, the updated terms state:

You agree that we (or any organization acting on our behalf) may use automated software (such as web scrapers, bots, robots, spiders, crawlers, user agents, etc.) to access, index, cache, analyse, collect, retrieve, or crawl domains, web pages, or URLs associated with your products or services (and the content available through them), create test credentials, or create test credentials by you or your users. Through your use of the Products and Services, you agree to be made available to us and to receive periodic updates. Domains, web pages, URLs, etc. Meta may use the content of such domains, web pages, or URLs for the purpose of providing, developing, improving, researching, training, and maintaining the integrity of the Meta Company products, services, and features provided under these Commercial Terms and other applicable supplemental terms.

The terms do not explicitly mention AI. However, legal experts infer that AI training could be covered by the language referring to automated scraping, crawling, and the use of website content for “training.”