Meta has suspended the use of generative artificial intelligence (also known as GenAI) in Brazil after the country’s data protection authority issued a preliminary ban objecting to its new privacy policy.
In fact, META recently had to confront the Brazilian government (with the ANPD, precisely), because its generative artificial intelligence model, not only does it violate Brazilian laws, but it also apparently violates (and above all) people’s privacy.
The development regarding META’s GenAI has been reported for the first time by the Reuters news agency.
The company owned by Mark Zuckerberg said it had decided to suspend the tools while it talks with Brazil’s National Data Protection Authority (ANPD) to address the agency’s concerns about its use of GenAI technology.
Earlier this month, the ANPD broke off with immediate effect the social media giant’s new privacy policy which granted the company access to users’ personal data to train its GenAI systems.
The decision stems from the “imminent risk of serious and irreparable damage or damage which is difficult to repair to the fundamental rights of the data subjects“, the agency said.
Brazil’s ANPD and META’s ultimatum to GenAi
It also set a daily fine of 50,000 reais (about $9,100 as of July 18) for non-compliance; last week, Brazil’s ANPD given in Meta “five more days to demonstrate compliance with the decision.”
In response, Meta said she was “disappointed” by the ANPD’s decision and that the move constitutes “a step back for innovation, competition in AI development and further delays in bringing the benefits of AI to people in Brazil.”
Not only the ANPD of Brazil, but also other entities question the legitimacy of GenAI’s training
The use of personal data to train AI systems without their explicit consent or knowledge has raised privacy concerns, forcing US tech giants to suspend the launch of their tools in regions with stricter data privacy laws, such as the European Union.
Human Rights Watch reported in June how personal photos of Brazilian children ended up in image description datasets such as LAION-5B, exposing them to further exploitation and harm through the facilitation of malicious deepfakes.
In addition to META’s GenAI, Apple also adds its own GenAI
Apple, which has announced a new artificial intelligence system called AppleIntelligence Last month, it said it would not bring the functionality to Europe this year due to regulatory concerns arising from the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
“We are concerned that the interoperability requirements of the DMA may force us to compromise the integrity of our products in ways that put the privacy and security of users’ data at risk.,” has declared Apple to the Wall Street Journal.
Meta has confirmed to Axios that it will also withdraw its upcoming multi-modal AI models from customers in the region due to the “unpredictable nature of the European regulatory environment.”
What are the main risks of a generative AI that violates users’ privacy?
To put it very briefly, there is a risk that with a tool like generative artificial intelligence, also called GenAI (or similar tools) that train using real faces (you also need permission), you could find your face on a deepfake (which would be, as the term suggests, a “deep fake”, a video that uses real faces on computer-generated but realistic images), This is very dangerous not only in terms of user privacy, but also because someone can easily make you do things you’ve never done and put words in your mouth that you’ve never said.
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