Source: Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer

Freshfields analyzes a significant decision by the Higher Regional Court of Cologne, which rejected an application for a preliminary injunction against Meta. The plaintiff sought to stop Meta from using their public Facebook and Instagram data to train its Llama AI models. The court ruled in favor of Meta, indicating that the company's "legitimate interest" (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR) in training AI models for innovation and service improvement outweighed the user's data protection rights in this specific context.

The briefing highlights that this is one of the first major judicial endorsements in the EU for using publicly available personal data to train generative AI without explicit consent, provided there is an opt-out mechanism. The court reasoned that the data was not sensitive and that Meta had implemented sufficient safeguards. This ruling provides crucial legal clarity for AI developers operating within the GDPR framework, suggesting a path forward for innovation that respects privacy principles.