X quietly began training its Grok AI chat platform using members’ public posts, without informing anyone in advance that it was doing this by default.
In the race for dominance, AI platforms are constantly seeking data to train large-scale language models (LLMs).
This makes your data extremely valuable, but rather than asking for your permission, most platforms use it without notifying you or the sites that obtain it.
To avoid being left out of the game, X quietly began training its Grok AI chat platform with user posts without asking for permission or announcing the change.
It wasn’t until Thursday, July 25, that users noticed a new setting under the site’s privacy settings that allowed the platform to use their data. To make matters worse, the setting is enabled by default, rather than opt-in.
X’s safety team confirmed the new setting in a tweet, saying it’s currently only available on the web version of the site and will soon be rolling out to mobile as well.
“All X users can control whether their public posts are used to train Grok, our AI search assistant,” X’s Safety account tweeted.
“This option is in addition to the existing control over whether Grok-related interactions, inputs, and results are available. The setting is available on the web platform and will soon be rolling out to mobile.”
“This privacy option is available in the same privacy settings accessible to all X users, so it’s easy to access with just a few clicks.”
The site’s “About Grok” page has also been updated to clarify that X may use user submissions to train Grok, something that wasn’t stated on previous versions of the page.
“To continually improve your user experience, we may leverage user interactions, inputs, and results on X Posts and/or Grok for training and fine-tuning purposes,” the “About Grok” page currently states.
This setting is enabled by default, so X has likely been using members’ data to train its AI platform for quite some time, but this new option allows users to opt out.
How to avoid using your data for training Grok
If you don’t want to allow X to use your posts to train Grok, you have two options.
The first option is to make your account private, but in many cases this can severely limit your experience with X, so this is not a good choice.
A better option is to log into the X site from your desktop and click[その他]Click the button.
From there, click on “Settings and Privacy,” select “Grok” under “Data Sharing and Personalization,” and uncheck the “Allow Grok posts, interactions, typing, and results to be used for training and fine-tuning” setting, as shown below.
New setting to disable training Grok with data
Source: BleepingComputer
Enabling this setting means that X will no longer use your data to train Grok and will no longer share it with Musk’s AI company, xAI.
