As Facebook has increasingly begun to explore artificial intelligence, many experts have expressed concerns that the company could be using our data to help train its technology. And this week, Facebook President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg came right out and confirmed the company is doing exactly that.

According to Clegg, Facebook did not scrape private posts shared with family and friends for data, and it also did not collect private chats on its messaging apps. The company says it also tried to filter out private details from the public information it gathered.

“We’ve tried to exclude datasets that have a heavy preponderance of personal information,” Clegg said. However, he went on to note that the “vast majority” of the data the company used was publicly available, suggesting that some of it indeed could’ve been private. As to what kind of content this AI technology can generate, Clegg said he expects the tool to be challenged for potentially misusing copyrighted material. “I strongly suspect that’s going to play out in litigation,” he noted.

This executive’s attitude toward data is a great example of why all Facebook users should be careful about what they share. The company will clearly use our information for whatever purpose it wants without a second’s hesitation, so we should be far more judicious when giving it to them.

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