Meta pauses AI terms that shifted error blame to businesses

Portrait of Paul Solman
Paul Solman
Portrait of Paul Solman
SignedNews contributor
Paul Solman contributes business and crime and justice coverage to SignedNews. Paul Solman is a journalist whose work has appeared in PBS News.
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Meta pauses AI terms that shifted error blame to businesses

Meta has indefinitely paused new terms of service for its business customers. The terms would have let the company take any content from those customers' websites and made the businesses responsible for every error produced by faulty AI.

The company announced the pause in a note on Facebook's business help center. The note followed customer pushback that an earlier postponement had failed to quiet.

Meta unveiled the terms on October 19 and set them to take effect on October 30. It later moved the start date to November 20, a short delay that did little to ease objections.

In a statement, Meta said it was pausing the changes so it could keep working with stakeholders and take the time needed to get them right. The company did not give a new date.

The shift of liability onto customers would have left businesses facing the kind of legal exposure that UK regulators recently warned about.

The reversal caps a rough stretch for Meta. Two weeks ago, the company was fined for illegally using customers' data, and in May it laid off 8,000 employees.

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Paul Solman contributes business and crime and justice coverage to SignedNews.

Paul Solman is a journalist whose work has appeared in PBS News.