The company had started just two months ago tracking workers’ computer usage for AI training data.

Meta has paused a new company-wide program of tracking its employees' computer usage which has been plagued by internal frustration. The program was started only two months ago as part of an effort by Meta to gather data on how people used computers, including mouse clicks and keystrokes, that could be used to train artificial intelligence (AI) models. It was met immediately with upset from employees who were to have their every online action at work tracked and recorded, but also concerned about where the data was going and how it would be protected. Meta halted the program on Monday after realising some of the collected data had been left potentially accessible to anyone inside the company. A Meta spokesman confirmed to the BBC that the program, named internally the Model Capability Initiative (MCI), was "on pause for now" as the company investigates the issue. "We have no indication at this time that any data was improperly accessed by Meta employees," the spokesman added. The pause follows weeks of blow-back from workers at the company, led by billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, to being tracked at work. In an initial response to worker frustration – which was displayed in part through a petition signed by nearly 2,000 Meta workers demanding that the MCI program be cancelled – Meta said it would allow workers to not be tracked for up to 30 minutes at a time.