U.S. — Meta paused its Model Capability Initiative program following internal concerns regarding employee privacy and data security. The initiative, introduced to collect data for training AI models, tracked employees' computer activity including keystrokes, mouse clicks, and screen content. Meta rolled out the tool to U.S. employees in April.

More than 1,600 Meta workers signed a petition against the program. The petition stated, "Collecting and repurposing this kind of data raises serious concerns around privacy, consent, and trust in the workplace." An internal security notice indicated that data collected by the Model Capability Initiative was accessible to anyone inside the company. The notice also indicated that employee data across 45,000 hive tables had been exposed, including full prompts, transcriptions, private conversations, and people and performance data.

Tracy Clayton, a Meta spokesperson, said, "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."

Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg discussed AI models learning from employees during an internal meeting. He stated that AI models learn from "watching really smart people do things." Zuckerberg also said, "The average intelligence of the people who are at this company is significantly higher than the average set of people that you can get to do tasks." Andrew Bosworth, Meta's chief technology officer, noted in an internal post that the tracking program's implementation had fallen short of the standards outlined in its privacy review.