São Paulo court orders Meta to halt training AI on Brazilian news content
A São Paulo civil court granted a preliminary injunction barring Meta from using Brazilian media outlets' content to train its AI models, with a daily fine for noncompliance.
Summary
The Rio Times reports that on 3 November 2026 a court in São Paulo issued a preliminary injunction stopping Meta from using news content from outlets belonging to three Brazilian media associations to train AI, according to those associations. The plaintiffs are ANJ (newspapers), Abert (broadcasters) and Aner (magazine publishers), who sued over commercial terms Meta planned to apply from 20 November. The outlet stresses that it has not seen the court file, and that the order is provisional and covers member outlets only.
According to the associations, the 44th Civil Court ordered Meta not to gather or use members' content absent authorisation, including for building and training AI systems. It also puts part of those terms on hold, and Meta must leave members' accounts, pages and tools fully working, with no sanctions for declining the new terms. Non-compliance carries a fine of R$1 million a day, capped at R$100 million, a ceiling the stated exchange rate would hit after 100 days. In the associations' account, the court saw signs of copyright infringement and contractual abuse; the decision itself has not been published.
The disputed terms apply to businesses using Facebook and Instagram. An early version let Meta crawl linked websites and use the content to train AI, and following trade press coverage on 15 October the verb "train" was deleted, though publishers argue the revised wording still covers generative AI. Meta pushed the launch from 30 October back to 20 November and has said it could slip further if consultation runs longer. The report places the case beside an interim order from the Oslo District Court on 28 October, and notes that no Meta response or appeal had been found.