Nearly 40 Organizations Call on Meta to Protect User Privacy
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, Public Citizen released a letter signed by nearly 40 organizations urging Meta to adopt affirmative consent as the governing principle for AI products that rely on consumers’ identities, likenesses, voices, biometric information, and personal data. The letter, which is being sent directly to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, will also be shared with the relevant House and Senate congressional committees to underscore growing concern over AI companies using the public’s collective likenesses and experiences as training data for large language models and other AI systems.
The letter builds on the momentum that successfully led to Meta pulling IG’s Muse feature since public reporting indicates that Meta continues to pursue AI-powered wearable technologies including prototype glasses capable of continuously capturing images and information about the people and environments around them.
“The widespread outrage sparked by the release of Meta’s now-terminated Muse feature is proof that the public broadly rejects the creepy and violating path that Meta appears to be actively pursuing,” said J.B. Branch, director of federal AI governance at Public Citizen. “Americans want — and deserve — meaningful privacy protections, but Big Tech has made it abundantly clear that they do not intend to change. It’s past time for Congress to act to enshrine privacy protections in federal law.”
The letter urges Meta to:
- Obtain genuine, clear, affirmative consent before collecting or processing biometric information, including to identify a person
- Cease business and data practices that replicate a person’s voice or likeness, or train AI models
- Ensure that privacy protections are easy to understand, easy to exercise, and enabled by default where appropriate.
- Publicly commit that meaningful affirmative consent, not data maximization, will guide Meta’s responsible innovation principles.
For more information or to speak with J.B. Branch, contact eleach@citizen.org.