Meta has temporarily suspended a program it used to track employees' activities and use the data to train artificial intelligence models. The decision comes after a data breach within the company.
According to the report, employees' private messages, transcripts of conversations, and performance metrics were made available to the company. Although the extent of the breach was not disclosed, Meta confirmed the data breach and said it was investigating.
In April of this year, Reuters reported that Meta had installed a corporate program called Model Capability Initiative (MCI) on the computers of employees in the United States. The system tracked mouse movements, keyboard keystrokes, and collected screenshots. The company said the data was used to help artificial intelligence systems better learn about human-computer interaction.
Meta had previously said that the data collected would not be used to evaluate employee performance and that special security measures would be taken to protect sensitive data. However, the program has caused dissatisfaction among employees, especially against the backdrop of extensive layoffs at the company. Protest campaigns and signature drives were held in offices in the US and UK against the system.
According to the latest information published by Business Insider, Meta has suspended the program after an internal data leak and is investigating the causes of the incident.
