Meta has backed off a little. After announcing in April that a tool called the Model Capability Initiative would log employees' keystrokes and mouse clicks to train its AI models, the company has now told staff they can pause the data collection for "up to 30 minutes at a time" or request an exemption altogether, according to an internal memo seen by the BBC.
The retreat follows weeks of pushback, including a worker petition that has gathered more than 1,500 signatures. Meta's original pitch was that "if we're building agents to help people complete everyday tasks using computers, our models need real examples of how people actually use them," and that the data was "not used for any other purpose." One employee told the BBC the whole thing felt "very dystopian," especially with another round of layoffs expected.
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