Meta has removed a clause from its commercial terms that critics said could let it train AI on publishers’ website content.

The language was in revised terms due October 30, covering businesses promoting content on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger.

It let Meta use content from a business’s domains, web pages or URLs to “develop, improve, research, train” its products.

Nieman Lab first flagged the clause, and Cornell professor James Grimmelmann called the language “absurdly broad.”

Critics argued the terms could override robots.txt, the file sites use to tell crawlers what they may copy.

Meta’s Andy Stone first said the update was about product listings for ad recommendations, “not about scraping news sites.”

On October 17, Meta deleted the clause, saying the crawling terms only applied to its ads and business products.

Meta says the change “does not change how Meta uses web crawlers.”

Read the full article for more details on Meta’s AI training clause.