The word “train” has lost its position in Meta's revised commercial terms. “Develop,” “improve” and “research” appear to have survived the restructuring.

Ars Technica reports that Meta changed the language after criticism that the terms could permit AI use of business-linked website content without a separate license, another front in the dispute over AI inputs and permission. Meta also narrowed the wording to advertising and business products. The company says the terms do not change its web-crawling practices or create new rights overriding sites' crawler preferences. Those are substantive assurances, and they deserve something sturdier than the continued absence of a verb.

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Legal experts consulted by Ars say “develop” can still encompass training and that the scope of “business products” remains unclear. Meta has made the provision less explicit about the activity that worried people. That is progress in the particular field of making worried people search for synonyms.

The company acknowledged changing the wording without alerting users. So the businesses asked to understand these terms also get to discover which version of the understanding is currently being offered.

No court finding of unlawful scraping is hiding in this edit. Neither is a crisp contractual prohibition on the disputed use. For now, the clearest result is that “train” will no longer be answering questions.