Brazil’s national data protection authority, or more locally known as The Autoridade Nacional de Proteção de Dados (ANPD), announced on Tuesday that tech giant Meta is not allowed to use data sourced from users originating in the country to train its AI systems.
According to the ANPD, this move is driven by the need to safeguard Brazilian citizens from “the imminent risk of serious and irreparable or difficult-to-repair damage to the fundamental rights of the affected data subjects.”
The agency estimates the number of active Facebook users in Brazil at around 102 million, considered as one of the tech company’s major markets globally.
A Meta spokesperson, meanwhile, expressed the company’s disappointment over this decision and assured users that the practice is compliant with Brazil’s existing privacy laws while the move to ban is a “step backwards for innovation.”
“We use information that is publicly available online and licensed information. We also use information shared on Meta’s Products and services. This information could be things like posts or photos and their captions. We do not use the content of your private messages with friends and family to train our AIs,” Meta’s updated privacy policy reads.
In June, Meta postponed the implementation of this updated privacy policy after the filing of 11 European Union (EU) country complaints.