I’m hoping someone understands the situation better than I do. Twitter/X is changing their terms of service tomorrow, and it sounds like they will be using AI to train on your data (perhaps taking copyright too), with no way to opt out – that’s what I’m seeking clarity on.
Adding to the confusion, is a checkbox to opt out of Grok under the Privacy settings, that specifically says it won’t train on AI. That option has been there for at least a month, and some people think the new TOS superseeds that checkbox, thus making it pointless.
Is deleting posts and content the only option for a hint of protection? Thanks for any thoughts.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the only way to opt-out is to stop using X…but it probably will still have access to all your data to use however it likes even if you close your account (Meta does the same thing, by the way).
In any case, whether or not a site’s TOS allows AI training doesn’t matter much from a privacy perspective. AI builders scrape data from all across the Internet with most not caring about copyrights or target sites’ TOS. If something is accessible online, an AI is going to slurp it up at some point.
A notorious example is how Clearview AI—and this predates the even hungrier generative AIs—built up its database of images:
If you don’t want to delete your X/Twitter account (which I encourage you to do), consider the Block Party browser extension. A 7-day free trial and $20 a year will clean up most all bogus privacy settings in 9 different social media sites, including MuskBot.
Thank you. You make very good, if not unfortunate, points about reality. Deleting an account, and letting someone reregister it in the future doesn’t sound great, so deleting posts is about the only option.
One of the frustrating things about these services is how they constantly add features or preferences, without notification. I guess the Grok preference has been there about 5 months, back when the setting had some value.
The next fun will be when adults are forced to provide ID in certain states, to prove they are adults, just to access existing social media accounts. It will be interesting to see how that plays out in the next few months when some states start to enforce that. I’m sure those social media sites will protect (or copyright, use AI) on one’s ID, just like with everything else
