Meta halts worker tracking for AI training due to privacy fears

Meta has paused a new company-wide program of tracking its employees' computer usage which has been plagued by internal frustration. The program was started only two months ago as part of an effort by Meta to gather data on how people used computers, including mouse clicks and keystrokes, that could be used to train artificial intelligence (AI) models. It was met immediately with upset from employees who were to have their every online action at work tracked and recorded, but also concerned about where the data was going and how it would be protected. Meta halted the program on Monday after realising some of the collected data had been left potentially accessible to anyone inside the company. A Meta spokesman confirmed to the BBC that the program, named internally the Model Capability Initiative (MCI), was on pause for now as the company investigates the issue.