Elon Musk’s X is changing its privacy policy to allow third parties to train AI on your posts

On Wednesday, social network X (formerly Twitter) updated its Privacy Policy to indicate that it would allow third-party “collaborators” to train their AI models on X data, unless users opt out. While X owner Elon Musk trained xAI’s Grok AI chatbot on X user data, leading to an investigation by the EU’s lead privacy regulator, the company hadn’t yet amended its policy to indicate its data may also be used by third parties.

The addition to the policy implies that X, like Reddit and various media organizations, is looking into licensing data to AI companies as a potential new revenue stream.

In Section 3 of the updated Privacy Policy titled “Sharing Information,” X added a paragraph detailing how X user data can be used and how users could opt out.

It reads:

“Third-party collaborators. Depending on your settings, or if you decide to share your data, we may share or disclose your information with third parties. If you do not opt out, in some instances the recipients of the information may use it for their own independent purposes in addition to those stated in X’s Privacy Policy, including, for example, to train their artificial intelligence models, whether generative or otherwise.”

The policy points to the settings page on X, but does not specifically indicate where users would go within the settings to toggle off data-sharing. Currently, the “Privacy and safety” section in settings lets users turn on or off data-sharing with xAI’s Grok and with other “business partners,” but the latter is described as those companies that X may work with to “run and improve its products,” not other AI providers.

That may be because the updated privacy policy won’t become effective until November 15, at which point the opt-out option could be added. (We hope.)