Meta has paused its Model Capability Initiative (MCI), an internal program that tracks employee mouse movements, clicks, and keystrokes to train AI models.
The company stopped the program on June 22, 2026, after Reuters reviewed documents showing that sensitive employee data collected through MCI was unintentionally accessible to all Meta staff.
It has not announced when the program might restart or if it will return in its current form. The data exposure was not caused by an external breach but resulted from a permissions misconfiguration that allowed all Meta employees to access the data collected by the program.
What the Model Capability Initiative Does and What Employee Data Was Exposed
The Model Capability Initiative was launched in April 2026. It collects various data points from US-based Meta employees, including mouse movements, clicks, keystrokes, and occasional screenshots.
This collected data is used to train Meta's AI models, with the aim of helping AI systems better understand how human workers perform tasks. However, according to Reuters, the initiative resulted in a large pool of detailed employee behavioral data being stored.
The data that was exposed reportedly included private conversations, performance data, and transcriptions. Normally, such materials would be restricted to HR or a small group of managers. However, due to a permissions error, the data was accessible to Meta's entire workforce.
Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton said, "We have carefully designed this program with privacy safeguards. While we have no evidence at this time that any data was improperly accessed by Meta employees, we are pausing the program to investigate."
The company also declined to specify how long the pause would last.
Internal Tension, Legal Risks, and What Comes Next for Meta’s Monitoring Program
MCI has been a controversial topic within Meta since it was introduced. Employees raised concerns about being monitored by software designed to analyze their work habits, especially since the program was rolled out before a series of large layoffs, including an announcement in May 2026 to cut 8,000 jobs.
To help ease some of these concerns, Meta added a pause feature that allows employees to disable tracking for up to 30 minutes at a time. This addition pointed to how pervasive the monitoring had become.
Logging keystrokes and taking screenshots of identifiable employees can pose serious legal risks under the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation.
GDPR standards are strict when it comes to processing personal data and generally view workplace consent as unreliable, given the power imbalance between employer and employees.
The scenario where sensitive employee records become widely accessible within a company illustrates a failure GDPR aims to prevent.
Although this program is currently limited to employees in the United States, Meta's long-term plans for similar features would likely encounter considerable regulatory challenges in the EU.
Meta has stated it will investigate the exposure. The company has not given a timeline for the investigation, a resumption date for the program, or details about any changes that might be made before MCI returns.
The incident raises wider questions about employee surveillance for AI training. More companies are experimenting with tools that monitor work patterns to help train assistants and agents. Such programs require strict internal access controls that match the sensitivity of the data involved.
For now, MCI is offline. Meta has not said whether the program will return in its current form, be redesigned, or be discontinued.
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