Meta's new commercial terms: what the AI training clause says now, and who it covers

The Morse teamPublished November 1, 20266 min read

The updated Meta commercial terms let Meta crawl the websites tied to business accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, but as of October 24, 2026 the text no longer says Meta may use what it collects to train AI, and it doesn't apply to personal accounts. The training wording was in the first published version and was removed within days. Meta's US preview now says the update takes effect on November 20, 2026, three weeks later than the October 30 date in most coverage.

We read Meta's current Commercial Terms, the US and UK English previews of the update, the preview of its Self-Serve Ad Terms, its consumer Terms of Service, and its crawler documentation on October 24, 2026. Where a fact comes from reporting rather than Meta's own pages, we say so. Meta deserves some credit here. It narrowed the clause quickly after the criticism, and it documents each of its crawlers by name, with the robots.txt rule that blocks it.

What do Meta's new commercial terms say about AI training?

Nothing directly, in the versions we read. The word "train" doesn't appear anywhere in Meta's US preview (Meta) or its UK English preview (Meta).

The crawling clause is still there. In it, a business says "you authorize us (or any entity acting on our behalf) to use automated software (such as web scrapers, bots, robots, spiders, crawlers, and user agents)" and "create test credentials to access, index, cache, analyze, collect, retrieve, or crawl the domains, web pages, or URLs (and any content available through them) that are associated with your products or services." Meta may also "periodically pull updates" from those sites. The stated purpose is "to provide, develop, improve, research, and maintain advertising and business products" (Meta).

The first version said more. PPC Land quoted the UK English text on October 16, 2026 as saying "Meta may use any content from such domains, web pages or URLs to provide, develop, improve, research, train and maintain the integrity of, the Meta Company Products" (PPC Land). By October 18, Digital Trends reported the revised wording that ties the crawl to advertising and business products (Digital Trends).

Two broader lines stay in. The preview says Meta "may use such Content as described in our Terms, including to provide, develop, improve, research, and maintain Meta Company Products," and that Meta keeps Commercial Content "for product improvement and safety purposes" (Meta). The current terms, effective March 6, 2024, have the same retention sentence and no crawling clause (Meta).

Who do Meta's commercial terms cover?

Anyone using Meta's products for business, whatever their size. The preview says business or commercial purposes "include using ads or marketing messages, selling or listing products, developing apps, creating or using a product catalog, managing a Page, managing a Group for business purposes, using any business product, such as Ads Manager or Meta Business Suite, or using our measurement services regardless of the entity type" (Meta).

That list is longer than today's. The current version names "using ads, selling products, developing apps, managing a Page," Groups run for business, and measurement services (Meta). Marketing messages, product listings, catalogs, Ads Manager, and Meta Business Suite are new.

Personal use is governed by Meta's Terms of Service, effective January 1, 2025. As of October 24, 2026, that page shows no banner about upcoming changes and has no clause letting Meta crawl your website (Meta).

When do Meta's new terms take effect?

November 20, 2026, according to Meta's US preview, which says "these updates will go into effect on November 20, 2026" (Meta). Reuters reported on October 23 that a Meta spokesperson said "we are extending the effective date of our updated Commercial Terms and Self-Serve Ad Terms to 20 November," after publishers and advertisers complained to EU and UK antitrust authorities (Reuters via 93.3 The Drive).

Meta's own pages didn't agree with each other on the day we read them.

If you run a business outside the US, check the version Meta shows in your language before you rely on either date.

What did the headlines get wrong?

Mostly they're out of date. On October 16, The Register ran "Meta grants itself right to scrape content from business customers for model training" (The Register). That matched the first text. The version we read lists no training purpose, and the October 30 date in that coverage has moved in the US.

Two claims go too far the other way. The terms don't reach personal Facebook or Instagram accounts. And dropping "train" from a contract doesn't mean Meta stops training on web content. Its crawler documentation says Meta-ExternalAgent "crawls the web for use cases such as training foundation AI models" (Meta). That crawler runs whether or not you have a business account.

Can a business stop Meta crawling its website?

Partly, with robots.txt. Meta's crawler page gives a separate user agent for each job: Meta-ExternalAgent for AI training, Meta-ExternalAds for "improving advertising and other business-related products and services," and Meta-WebIndexer for Meta AI search. Each can be blocked with a Disallow rule, and Meta says changes can take up to 24 hours (Meta).

Two of Meta's crawlers carry exceptions. Meta-ExternalFetcher "may bypass robots.txt rules" when a user asks it to fetch a link, and FacebookExternalHit "might bypass robots.txt when performing security or integrity checks" (Meta). The commercial terms themselves don't mention robots.txt. Their only opt-out is "if you do not agree to the updated terms, you may stop all access or use of our Products for business or commercial purposes" (Meta). This isn't legal advice.

Does this change anything for ordinary Meta AI users?

No. If you only chat with Meta AI on a personal account, your rules are in Meta's consumer terms and its AI terms, and those didn't change with this update. We cover what Meta keeps from those chats, and how they feed ads, in is Meta AI private, and compare Meta's training rules with 14 other apps in which AI companies train on your data.

How Morse keeps your business questions out of someone else's terms

Whatever a platform holds, its own terms decide what it may do with it, and Meta can rewrite those terms with a notice that tells you to stop using its business products if you disagree. Morse is built to hold as little as it can. Your chat history is stored in your browser, encrypted, not on Morse's servers, and Morse doesn't train AI on your content, sell your data, or show ads (privacy policy).

So the questions you'd ask about a pricing plan, a supplier contract, or a pitch draft sit in your browser, not in a pile on our servers that a terms update could repurpose. Each chat has its own privacy mode:

• Private, for business plans you'd rather no host keep. New chats start here. Open-weight models like DeepSeek, Kimi, and GLM, plus Grok, run under zero data retention agreements that Morse has with its inference, search, and other providers. Where a provider confirms zero retention on each reply, Morse checks it and refuses a reply that doesn't. Read more in what zero data retention means.
• E2EE, for numbers and drafts no one should read. Your browser checks the enclave's hardware attestation before anything leaves your device, then encrypts the message so only that enclave can read it, and Morse's servers relay text they can't read. The enclaves are run by third-party providers, not by Morse, and this rests on the enclave hardware and attestation working as designed. E2EE chats come with Pro.
• Anonymous, to ask GPT, Claude, or Gemini without the provider knowing it's you. Our proxy removes your account, email, and IP address and sends the message under Morse's own account. The provider still sees the words and may keep them for a limited time to check for abuse, under its own policy, so leave your company's name out of the prompt.

Your history is locked when you sign out and opens with two keys, one of which never leaves your device. Because we don't store chats, we usually have very little to give authorities. Clearing your browser or deleting your account removes your chats for good, and Morse can't recover them, so save anything you need.

Try a chat from the Morse home page with no account, or start free. End-to-end encrypted chats come with Pro, at $19 a month.