Meta expands AI web scraping despite site owner opt-out concerns

Security researchers and critics allege Meta is expanding web scraping for AI model training while disregarding standard website opt-out mechanisms. According to a warning circulated on Bluesky by security commentator Jordan Morley, Meta allegedly scrapes public websites to train generative AI systems even when site owners have signaled refusal via robots.txt or similar protocols. The criticism references a SecurityAffairs report claiming users cannot effectively prevent their content from being ingested into Meta's datasets. Meta has not issued a specific response to these latest allegations but has previously stated its AI training practices comply with applicable laws and respect publicly available information. This controversy highlights growing tensions between AI developers seeking vast training corpora and content creators demanding granular control over how their intellectual property is utilized for commercial machine learning applications.