James McAvoy and Tom Brady fall for 'Goodbye Meta AI' hoax

James McAvoy has appeared in the X-Men movie series as well as the television adaptation of His Dark Materials.

Over 600,000 individuals, including numerous famous personalities, have been duped by a scam that asserts it can prevent Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, from using their photos to develop artificial intelligence (AI).

Actors James McAvoy and Ashley Tisdale, along with ex-NFL star Tom Brady, have all reposted the false "Goodbye Meta AI" message on their Instagram stories.

The false rumor suggests that if you share this message, Meta will be unable to access your personal information anymore.

Actually, users of Facebook and Instagram who wish to disengage from AI training can do so through their account settings, and sharing this information publicly doesn't have any effect.

A lot of these messages have now been classified as "false information" by Lead Stories, which is one of Meta's partner fact-checking organizations.

The blog seems to have been written in response to Meta's statement in June about using public posts to train its AI model. However, the company has reassured the BBC that sharing this message does not affect any user's privacy settings.

A representative from Meta stated, "Sharing this narrative does not qualify as a legitimate form of dissent."

The message has been circulated on Instagram Stories countless times.

Lead Stories traced the start of the trend back to a Facebook post made on September 1, which had slightly different phrasing from the version that ultimately gained widespread attention.

However, it was only this week, when several major celebrity accounts started sharing the post, that the trend really took off. As a result, Google Trends showed a significant increase in searches for the term "Goodbye Meta AI" following September 24.

This isn't the first instance where social media has been overtaken by what is known as "copypasta." This term refers to a chunk of text that gets frequently duplicated and shared online.

The fact-checking site Snopes has reported on multiple occasions over the last ten years where individuals have asserted their privacy rights in public posts, but these efforts have not been successful.

However, it's uncommon to witness so many well-known accounts getting caught up in the scam.

Other social media platforms have faced backlash over their plans to use public posts for training AI models. In light of the criticism, LinkedIn announced this week that it would reverse its decision to proceed with this initiative in the UK.