Meta will monitor employee mouse and keyboard activity to build AI training data, raising privacy concerns at the company

Meta announced it will track employee computer activity—mouse movements, keystrokes, and screen interactions—to collect data for training its AI models. The company did not specify a start date or scope, but confirmed the tracking applies to work devices.

Unlike hiring external contractors or purchasing datasets, Meta is using its own workforce's daily work as a source of training material. This means the company gets AI training data at minimal cost while employees have little visibility into what specific actions are being recorded or how the data is used.

For Meta employees, this creates a new privacy trade-off: your routine work habits become part of a corporate AI training pipeline without explicit consent or separate compensation. For other workers in tech and beyond, this signals a potential industry shift toward using internal activity monitoring as a cost-cutting alternative to outside data sources—a practice that could spread if it faces no legal or regulatory pushback.

No opt-out mechanism or timeline has been announced. Employees concerned about the policy have no official channel to refuse participation without risking their employment status.