Meta can use public Facebook and Instagram data for AI training, German court

A German higher regional court has cleared Meta to use public data from adult Facebook and Instagram users to train its AI systems, dismissing an emergency lawsuit from a consumer protection group. The court found the approach fits within European privacy law (GDPR), even though Meta removes user names and other identifiers, which it still treats as personal data, and that Meta's business interests in AI outweigh users' privacy concerns. The ruling is provisional and covers only the emergency proceedings, and German users have until May 26 to object or set their profiles to private. Christine Steffen of the filing consumer group warned that data already used for AI training is difficult to retrieve.