A German court has rejected a bid by a consumer protection group to block Meta, the parent company of Facebook, from using publicly available user data for the training of artificial intelligence.
In a ruling, the 15th Civil Senate of the Oberlandesgericht Köln (OLG) dismissed an emergency application filed by the Verbraucherzentrale NRW, a consumer protection group, which had sought to prevent Meta from processing publicly available user data for the training of artificial intelligence. The OLG Köln announced the decision on Friday.
The consumer protection group had argued that Meta plans to use personally identifiable data from publicly available profiles of its users for the training of artificial intelligence, starting from May 27. However, the OLG Köln concluded that neither a violation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) nor the Digital Markets Act (DMA) was present. The Irish data protection authority, responsible for Meta, shares this assessment and is not taking any supervisory measures.
The court also stated that Meta pursues legitimate interests in the data processing and that the interests of the users do not prevail. Meta only uses publicly available data, which can also be found by search engines. Users have the option to object to the data processing or to switch their data to a “non-public” setting. The ruling is considered final, according to the OLG Köln.