Mark Zuckerberg: publishers ‘overestimate the value’ of their work for training AI

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says there are complex copyright questions around scraping data to train AI models, but he suggests the individual work of most creators isn’t valuable enough for it to matter. In an interview with The Verge deputy editor Alex Heath, Zuckerberg said Meta will likely strike “certain partnerships” for useful content. But if others demand payment, then — as it’s done with news outlets — the company would prefer to walk away.

“I think individual creators or publishers tend to overestimate the value of their specific content in the grand scheme of this,” Zuckerberg said in the interview, which coincides with Meta’s annual Connect event. “My guess is that there are going to be certain partnerships that get made when content is really important and valuable.” But if creators are concerned or object, “when push comes to shove, if they demanded that we don’t use their content, then we just wouldn’t use their content. It’s not like that’s going to change the outcome of this stuff that much.”