Meta has scaled back its controversial plan to monitor employees' computer activity to train artificial intelligence models, introducing new controls that let staff pause tracking for up to 30 minutes and allowing some workers to opt out entirely, according to internal memos reported this week.
The changes apply to Meta's "Model Capability Initiative" (MCI), a software tool that records keystrokes, mouse movements, and other on-screen activity on company devices to generate data for training AI agents that can perform routine computer tasks.
The program, first rolled out to U.S. employees in April, immediately drew criticism inside the company over privacy and surveillance concerns, as staff questioned how much of their day-to-day work and personal use on corporate machines would be logged, according to the BBC.
Meta has said the system is designed solely to improve its AI models and would not be used in performance reviews.
Under the revised policy, employees can now "pause" data collection for up to 30 minutes at a time when they need to handle personal matters, such as checking private email or accessing sensitive information not related to Meta's business, according to a memo cited by several outlets.
The pause function temporarily stops MCI from recording activity on Meta-managed devices and internal apps, but automatically resumes tracking once the time limit expires. Meta told staff the feature is intended to give workers a narrowly defined window of privacy without undermining the AI training goals of the program.
The company is also creating a path for some employees to request full exemptions from MCI tracking, though those opt-outs will be tightly restricted, Business Times reported.
Workers who regularly handle "sensitive" material, such as certain legal, security or confidential projects, remote employees facing bandwidth constraints, and staff who often work in locations where laptops cannot remain plugged in will be able to ask to be excluded from the initiative, internal communications indicate.
These exemptions follow weeks of internal pushback, including critical discussions on employee forums and posts and flyers shared by staff voicing concerns about surveillance.
Meta has argued that using real employee workflows is necessary to teach AI agents to complete complex sequences of actions, such as navigating software interfaces or using keyboard shortcuts, at a level that synthetic training data cannot match.
A company representative previously said the data collected through MCI would not be repurposed beyond AI development and that safeguards are in place to limit exposure of confidential content, as per Mashable.
Originally published on vcpost.com
