German Court Dismisses Attempt to Block Meta AI Data Processing
A German regional court on Tuesday dismissed a request for a preliminary injunction in a General Data Protection Regulation-related lawsuit against Meta over its AI-related data processing.
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The plaintiff, listed as a charitable foundation under Dutch law, sued to block Meta from processing personal data for AI model training. The plaintiff said the company’s processing violated the GDPR and reuse provisions under the Digital Markets Act. According to an unofficial translation of the ruling, the plaintiff argued that Meta “did not provide transparent information about the use of personal data for the development and improvement of AI models.” It also alleged Meta was collecting sensitive data from children.
The Schleswig-Holstein Higher Regional Court's 6th Civil Senate ruled that the plaintiff didn’t demonstrate “urgency” in filing the lawsuit. The filing noted that Meta publicly announced the AI-related data processing in April, saying it would “use the public content of adult users and their interactions with artificial intelligence to train their AI models in Meta products.” The court said there’s no demonstrated urgency because the charity could have filed for a preliminary injunction before the conduct started: “There is no longer any urgency if there is more than a month between the announcement and the start of the conduct.”