X’s recently updated privacy policy has informed its users that it will now be collecting biometric data, along with users’ job and education history, as reported by Bloomberg earlier this week. However, this is not the only change in X’s approach to user data. According to an update in another section of the policy, the company also plans to utilize the information it gathers, as well as publicly available data, for the purpose of training its machine learning and artificial intelligence models.
This revision was brought to light by Alex Ivanovs of Stackdiary, a known observer of significant updates in the terms of service of tech companies. In the past, Ivanovs has uncovered AI-related updates in the terms of service of Brave and Zoom. His post regarding this discovery is currently trending on Y Combinator’s discussion forum, Hacker News.
Specifically, the alteration to X’s policy can be found in section 2.1, which reads as follows:
“We may use the information we collect and publicly available information to help train our machine learning or artificial intelligence models for the purposes outlined in this policy.”
Ivanovs speculates that X’s owner, Elon Musk, who has aspirations in the AI market with his company xAI, likely intends to use X as a data source for xAI. This theory is supported by Musk’s recent tweet encouraging journalists to write about X, which may have been an effort to generate more interesting and valuable data to feed into the AI models.
Musk has previously stated that xAI would utilize “public tweets” for training its AI models, making this connection less surprising. He has also accused other tech giants of using Twitter for training their AI models, even threatening Microsoft with a potential lawsuit for alleged illegal use of Twitter data. Musk has even filed a lawsuit against unidentified entities for scraping Twitter data, which might have been related to training artificial intelligence models, especially large language models.
Additionally, Ivanovs points out the text on the xAI homepage, which states that while it’s a separate company from X Corp., it “will work closely with X (Twitter), Tesla, and other companies to make progress towards our mission.”
Musk essentially confirmed the privacy policy change by responding to a post on X and clarifying that the plan is to use “just public data, no DMs or anything private.”
It’s worth noting that X’s approach to media inquiries has changed since Musk took over the social network. Instead of responding with a poop emoji, as was the case following Musk’s takeover, the company now sends an auto-responder stating, “We’ll get back to you soon.” If this indeed holds true, X’s comment will be added when received.
