Industry
Meta updates business terms to train AI on publisher websites
New commercial platform terms taking effect on October 30 permit Meta to crawl and scrape business-associated websites to train and develop its AI models.
Meta is revising its commercial terms of service to allow the company to crawl and scrape content from websites associated with businesses that use its platforms, according to a report from Nieman Lab reviewed by The Verge. The updated language grants Meta authorization to use external content to research, develop, improve, and train artificial intelligence systems without paying licensing fees.
The revised policy, scheduled to take effect on October 30, affects commercial entities, publishers, and brands that maintain business profiles, advertising integrations, or developer tools across Meta services. Legal analysts note the provision effectively conditions access to Meta's distribution tools on granting broad rights to ingest proprietary web domain data for foundational model training.
News publishers and digital media organizations are evaluating whether the change requires decoupling their commercial accounts or restructuring their platform integrations. Several media groups have already filed copyright infringement lawsuits against rival AI developers over uncompensated web scraping, making platform-level contractual terms a contentious battleground for training rights.