In April, Meta announced that it was going to track mouse movements and keystrokes of its employees in the US to train AI. That is, a software could track every time you moved your mouse or what you typed, all for training AI models. This move had come under scrutiny as some employees reportedly pushed back due to privacy concerns. Now, the tech giant is reportedly scaling back on how it tracks mouse movements, with an option for employees to request an exemption from this as well.
As per a report from Reuters, Stephane Kasriel, a vice-president in Meta’s Superintelligence Labs, sent an internal memo clarifying changes to this tracking. Now, the report said, employees will be able to pause data collection for up to 30 minutes at a time. Some may also be allowed exemptions from tracking entirely.
Kasriel said in the memo, “While we remain confident in the privacy protections we put in place at launch, which went through several layers of risk review, we have heard your concerns about personal data on work devices, battery life, and wanting more control over when capturing happens.”
Keep in mind that this change comes after reports emerged over employees not being happy with the tracking software. On top of that, the morale inside Meta is said to have hit new lows after the company announced layoffs impacting 8,000 workers globally. It is believed that some employees even began grabbing free snacks from their offices before the layoffs were announced.
What is Meta’s mouse tracking software?
Meta introduced the mouse tracking programme, known internally as the Model Capability Initiative, or MCI, as part of its wider push to build AI agents that can carry out work tasks autonomously.
That is, the company wanted AI agents to get better at working on their own by learning from human mouse movements and keystrokes. Some employees reportedly described the company as an “Employee Data Extraction Factory.”
Meta, which has so far been behind the likes of Anthropic and OpenAI in the agentic AI race, wants to release its own AI agents for work purposes. The company has also previously acquired Moltbook – the viral social media platform built for AI agents.
As per reports, apart from privacy concerns, the rollout also led to employees complaining of higher battery consumption and rising home internet use. However, in the memo, Stephane Kasriel has assured workers that the company has made optimisations that should help reduce battery drain.
Who can get exemptions from mouse tracking at Meta?
According to a report from The Information, the exemption from this tracking programme will be available for select employees. This group reportedly includes remote employees with bandwidth concerns, people handling sensitive material and those who often work in places where they cannot easily keep laptops connected to a power source.
The rest of Meta employees, at least in the US, will not be exempted from MCI. At the time of writing, the company has not expressed any interest in using MCI for employees in other regions.
Though there have been concerns that this software may put Meta at odds with the European Union’s privacy laws, in case a conversation between a Meta employee in the EU with one in the US is captured by the software.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended the MCI programme when it was initially released. He said at the time, “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.”
Zuckerberg has insisted that the data from mouse tracking will not be used for any purpose other than training AI agents. He explained, “None of the data is being used for, like, looking at what people are doing, or surveillance, or performance track[ing], or anything like that.” The Meta chief added, “It’s purely just, like, we are using this to feed a very large amount of content into the AI model, so that way it can learn how smart people use computers to accomplish tasks.”