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Starting today (November 15), a new clause in social media platform X’s terms of service will allow the use of users’ data to train its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, by default.
Text posts, photos, and videos are all now fair game for the training of Grok, Elon Musk’s chatbot. Grok is a large language model generative AI created by xAI designed to be provocative, edgy, and “rebellious”, and can access data on X in real time.
The updated terms of service state: “By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through [X]” users are providing the rights to “analyze text and other information you provide…for use with and training of our machine learning and artificial intelligence models, whether generative or another type”.
It is also suggested that X could sell your data to other companies to train their own chatbots, stating that users are providing the rights “to make Content submitted to or through [X] available to other companies, organizations or individuals.”
As a result of this change, competing social network Blue Sky has seen a massive surge in new users, claiming to have welcomed over one million new accounts since the recent US presidential election. Blue Sky is currently topping the app store charts in the UK, along with another X competitor, Threads. X is currently not in the top 50 apps.
Can you opt out of the new X terms of service?
There is currently a checkbox within the settings of X that suggests you can disallow your content from being used for Grok training purposes.
Go to Settings > Privacy and Safety > Data Sharing and Personalization > Grok to find the checkbox and deselect it.
However, this might not actually do anything. Nothing in the updated terms of service mentions this apparent opt-out which means that there is no protection legally if X decides to gobble up the data of opted-out users.
The only way to truly be sure that your data is not being used to train xAI’s edgy chatbot is to deactivate your account. Many users are taking steps towards this, including downloading an archive of their posts. Depending on the age of the account and the number of posts, this may take some time.
Featured image credit: Midjourney
