Elon Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter, has added a setting which allows the network to use users’ information to train its Grok AI.
The new setting appears to be “on” by default for most users and allows the network to gather their information to train Grok – not just from posts, but from other interactions with the site.
The new setting says: “To continuously improve your experience, we may utilize your X posts as well as your user interactions, inputs and results with Grok for training and fine-tuning purposes.
“This also means that your interactions, inputs, and results may also be shared with our service provider xAI for these purposes.”
The company made the change with little fanfare so it will have doubtless gone unnoticed by many users, although Musk did announce that his the company had begun training Grok this week in a post on X, promising “the world’s most powerful AI by every metric by December this year.”
What is Grok?
Grok is a chatbot (similar to ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude) that is accessible via X, but only to subscribers.
Once known as TruthGPT, Musk initially billed Grok as “a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe”. Musk has promised that Grok will be ‘anti-woke’ and offers a ‘Fun Mode’ as well as an ‘Unhinged Fun Mode’.
Why is the new setting controversial?
Similar changes at Meta (owner of Facebook and Instagram) have triggered complaints from data rights groups. Meta emailed Facebook and Instagram users in May to warn of a change, aiming to use user data to develop AI.
Privacy campaigners Open Rights Group (ORG) said: “With the latest update of their privacy policy, Meta has stated their intention to feed all the data they hold (about you) on their Facebook and Instagram platforms for the purposes of training ‘AI technology’.
“While Meta also stated that they would only use ‘public posts’, their privacy policy contradicts this by including any personal data collected through these platforms, with the sole exclusion of private chats.”
ORG has raised a complaint with regulators over the issue.
Veronika Pozdniakova, a privacy expert at privacy-focused phone company Murena, said, “As is often the case with online services, the new terms and conditions lack transparency, and this change directly impacts user privacy because the AI will be trained using users’ personal information, which they may not be aware of or fully comprehend.
Users should regularly review and manage data shared on such platforms, including posts, interactions, and direct messages. Users also can opt out by abandoning a platform whose terms and conditions they don’t agree with.”
How can you stop your data being used like this?
You can’t change this setting in the mobile app, but you can withdraw consent to your data being used in the desktop version of X on Mac or PC.
To do so, just go to your profile, then Settings > Privacy and Safety > Data Sharing and Personalization.
Select Grok, and then switch the slider to ‘Off.’