01/07/2024
Silicon Valley giant Meta has announced that from June 26, they are changing their user policy which will allow them to scrape any data, text, photos and videos posted to Facebook and Instagram since 2007 to train their AI technology.
This means that for you and every worker in the media, entertainment and arts industries, all of the photos, videos and text that you might have posted to Facebook and Instagram as part of your work might be used to train their AI technology without consent or compensation.
In our view this constitutes the theft of past and future work, and threatens the viability of Australia’s creative and cultural workforce.
Unlike some other parts of the world including Europe, Australia’s laws do not give users control over what happens to the things they post onto social media platforms.
Facebook and Instagram users in Australia face a stark choice: stop using these popular platforms and risk losing exposure to audiences, or to accept the new terms in the knowledge that they face having their work scraped and used to train Meta’s AI technology.
We need governments to act now to put in place strong and enforceable legislative protections for creative and media workers.
Join the fight for strong legal protections against AI theft of creative work.