Meta plans commercial terms change that could widen access to business website content

The update would let Meta use linked website content from business accounts without an opt-out, raising pressure on publishers seeking AI licensing deals.

Meta is preparing a commercial terms change on October 30 that would let it train AI on content tied to business accounts’ linked websites, not just the accounts’ social posts. That matters because the update appears to remove any opt-out for businesses and could let Meta keep crawling publisher sites without paying the kind of licensing fees news outlets have been trying to extract from AI companies. The Ars Technica report says the change applies to all business accounts, with publishers facing the biggest impact because their articles are exactly the kind of material Meta could use for model training. The story also notes that this lands amid an active fight between news organizations and OpenAI over whether training on such material without a license counts as fair use.