Meta’s AI could still scrape news sites, legal experts say

Why it matters

Meta revised its business terms after publishers objected to language that appeared to let the company train AI on content from websites linked to business accounts. The original terms, effective at the end of October, said Meta could use any such content to develop, research, and train its products, prompting warnings from legal experts that Meta might claim commercial agreements override robots.txt, the long-standing mechanism that tells crawlers, including Google's search engine, what they may access. Meta then removed the explicit reference to training. However, attorneys remain unconvinced. James Grimmelmann of Cornell Law School says the change does nothing to limit language that could let Meta scrape entire sites. Media attorney Matt Topic notes the revised terms still permit using scraped content to develop any 'business product,' an undefined phrase, and argues that 'develop' is broad enough to cover training. Meta insists the update is not aimed at news sites and does not supersede robots.txt preferences, but the dispute leaves publishers uncertain about protections.