# Meta can use public Facebook and Instagram data for AI training, German court Source: https://the-decoder.com/meta-can-use-public-facebook-and-instagram-data-for-ai-training-german-court-rules ## Summary 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. ## Article Skip to content GPT-4o prompted by THE DECODER A German higher regional court has cleared Meta to use public data from Facebook and Instagram users to train its AI systems, dismissing an emergency lawsuit from a consumer protection group. Back in April, Meta announced it would start using publicly available information from adult users—including names, profile photos, comments, and likes—to train its Llama language models. This data will also power "Meta AI," the company's chatbot now integrated into WhatsApp. Meta says private content like messages and chats won't be touched. German users have until May 26 to object or set their profiles to private. Instructions are available here (in German). While users can opt out later, Christine Steffen from the consumer group that filed the lawsuit warns it's nearly impossible to remove data once it's been used for AI training: "All data that has been entered into the AI is difficult to retrieve." Court says AI training is legitimate The German court found (in German) Meta's approach fits within European privacy law (GDPR). Even though Meta strips out user names and other identifiers, the court still considers this personal data. But Meta's business interests in developing AI outweigh users' privacy concerns in this case. The court acknowledged that fully anonymizing the data isn't technically feasible, making it necessary to process de-identified but still partly personal information. The judges leaned on a December 2024 opinion from the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), which says companies can use publicly available adult data—the kind you can find through search engines—under data protection rules. Meta meets these standards, according to the court. The company swore under oath that sensitive details like account information, home addresses, or license plate numbers won't make it into the training data. This ruling is provisional and only covers the emergency proceedings. A full trial could reach a different conclusion. There's also the question of whether Meta's practices violate the Digital Markets Act (DMA), a European law that limits combining personal data across multiple platforms. Unlike an EU Commission ruling in April, the German court didn't find a violation here. AI News Without the Hype – Curated by Humans Subscribe to THE DECODER for ad-free reading, a weekly AI newsletter, our exclusive "AI Radar" frontier report six times a year, full archive access, and access to our comment section. Subscribe now Full access to every article on THE DECODER No ads Join the comments and community discussions A weekly AI news recap via mail 6x/year: "AI Radar" — deep dives on the AI topics that matter most Daily AI news, always up to date Our full ten-year archive Covered by a team with 10+ years in AI Subscribe to The Decoder ## Comments **mishaderidder.eth**: today is the last day to object, you can to that in your meta apps at privacy settings (hard to find of course, but it’s there) **timdaub.eth**: Yeah as if Germans are in „control over their data,“ this is so dumb