4 September 2023, Bengaluru, India
As Bloomberg noted earlier this week, X recently amended its privacy statement to tell users that it will now also collect biometric information in addition to users’ employment and educational backgrounds. However, it seems that X has other interests in user data as well. The business also intends to use the data it gathers and other publicly available information to support the training of its machine learning and AI models, according to an update to another section of the policy.
Alex Ivanovs of Stackdiary, who has a history of identifying significant modifications in terms of service of internet firms and previously discovered AI-related updates in Zoom and Brave, observed the change. On the Hacker News discussion site run by Y Combinator, his message is currently trending.
The X policy change is found explicitly in section 2.1 and is as follows:
To train our artificial intelligence or machine learning models for the purposes described in this policy, we may use the information we gather as well as information that is readily available to the public.
Ivanovs reminds us that Elon Musk, the owner of X, wants to use his other business, xAI, to break into the AI sector. He surmises from this that Musk probably intends to use X as a source of data for Xai and that Musk’s recent tweet asking journalists to write about X was perhaps even an attempt to generate more fascinating and practical data to feed into the AI models.
This is not much of a leap as Musk has already said that xAI will train its AI models using “public tweets.” He charged that other internet behemoths were using Twitter to train their AI models, even threatening Microsoft with legal action for allegedly using Twitter data improperly. Musk also filed a lawsuit against unidentified parties for harvesting Twitter data, which may have been done to create massive language models for artificial intelligence.
Ivanovs also draws attention to wording found on the xAI homepage that claims that, despite being a separate business from X Corp, it “will work closely with X (Twitter), Tesla, and other companies to make progress towards our mission.”
In response to a post on X, Musk effectively confirmed the privacy policy change by stating that the intention is to use “just public data, no DMs or anything private.”
After Musk’s takeover of the social network, X previously responded to press inquiries by sending a feces emoji. However, they have now replaced this with an automated response stating, “We will respond to your inquiry shortly.” If this proves to be accurate, we will incorporate X’s statement.
It’s not definitive to conclude that X utilizes public data for training AI models solely based on the existence of their privacy policy. Privacy policies generally outline a company’s practices regarding the collection, utilization, and sharing of personal and non-personal information. However, they often lack specific details about the precise data origins and methods employed in AI model training.
A thorough examination of its privacy policy is necessary to ascertain whether X employs public data for training AI models, focusing on any explicit statements about data sources and intended purposes. Additionally, it’s advisable to explore supplementary information or ideas from the company in documents, press releases, or public communications. In cases where the privacy policy remains unclear, or you have particular concerns regarding data usage, direct contact with the company for clarification may also be prudent.
[Source of Information: Techcrunch.com]
