Meta has suspended an internal AI training program after an internal data leak exposed sensitive employee information company-wide, according to a Business Insider report on June 22. The program, introduced in April, was designed to help Meta train AI systems on real employee workflows by gathering data, but has now triggered internal backlash over privacy and data security.
Screenshots obtained by Business Insider showed that data collected through the program was more broadly accessible within Meta than intended. The exposed information reportedly included private employee conversations, performance-related data, transcriptions, and activity records. Meta classified the incident as a SEV 2, on an internal scale of 0 to 5, where SEV 0 is the most severe.
A Meta spokesperson confirmed that the company has paused the program while it investigates the incident. "We have carefully designed this program with privacy safeguards, and while we have no indication at this time that any data was improperly accessed by Meta employees, we're pausing it while we investigate," the spokesperson told Business Insider. The incident does not appear to be an external hack but rather an internal data mismanagement.
Meta introduced the program, called the Model Capability Initiative, to monitor employee behavior for use in improving its AI models. The program, which the company reportedly made mandatory for most staff, collected data on employees’ work activities, including keystrokes, mouse movements, conversations, transcripts, and performance-related information.
Employees were reportedly uncomfortable with the idea of their keystrokes and mouse movements being recorded for AI training. Now they're finding out the data may not have been properly protected, and was widely accessible across the company rather than restricted to intended viewers.
Screenshots reviewed by Business Insider reportedly showed employees criticizing the failure to lock down the data from the start. “I am incensed,” one employee wrote in an internal group, according to the report. Another said there was no evidence of malicious access, but called the lack of promised restrictions “super frustrating.”
The episode is the latest in a frustrating stretch for Meta's workforce. The company has cut thousands of jobs in part to fund AI infrastructure behind more powerful AI systems; the same class of systems that Meta and other companies are deploying to replace workers. Building these models also requires vast amounts of training data, and Meta turned to its own employees to supply it, a move most employees were reportedly against. Now these employees have learned that the data they were compelled to hand over was not adequately secured, leaving it exposed to much of the company.
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