Meta paused AI training on employee keystrokes after data was 'put in a place it wasn't supposed to go:' CTO

Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth shared new details about a data leak from its AI training program. Bloomberg/Getty Images Meta's technology chief shared details on the data leak from its Model Capability Initiative. Andrew Bosworth said an internal researcher had put the data "in a place it wasn't supposed to go." The program has been paused temporarily since June. Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth shed new light on the data leak that made the company pause its unpopular Model Capability Initiative. In an interview with The Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson, released on Wednesday, Bosworth spoke about why Meta paused the AI training program that involved tracking employee keystrokes. The interview was filmed in late June. Bosworth said that data generated by the training program was "quite secure," with only a small number of people having access, but it had been erroneously moved by one of Meta's researchers. "One of the researchers who was working downstream with that data—and there was no breach here— but had put it in a place it wasn't supposed to go," the executive told Thompson. The employee data, in a transformed state, had "landed someplace that it shouldn't have landed internally," he said, adding that Meta did not suspect foul play. The company was "locking the whole thing down" until it could get to the bottom of this incident, Bosworth said. The Model Capability Initiative was introduced in April. It involved installing software on the majority of Meta's US employees to track their keystrokes and mouse movements to train its AI models. The program — and Meta's instruction that employees couldn't opt out of it — drew major backlash from its workforce. Bosworth himself said, during an internal meeting, that employee morale in the company was "probably one of the worst it's ever been" in Meta's two-decade history. However, the program was paused in June after a leak made sensitive employee data accessible to the entire company, according to screenshots seen by Business Inside