Still no way to stop Grok's AI training on your X posts on the mobile app
It seems that Grok – the AI chatbot by Elon Musk's social media X – is not making headlines as often as, say, ChatGPT, or Google's Gemini; when it finally did over the weekend, things took a turn for the worse.
X users were slightly enraged because X is training its AI chatbot, Grok, on their posts by default, meaning users are automatically included unless they opt out. So, if you're an X user and haven't explicitly opted out, your posts are already being used to train Grok. Congratulations!
Recently, users discovered the opt-out option in X's privacy settings, sparking outrage over the automatic use of their data.
Nobody knows precisely when Grok began using X users' data. Earlier today, X's Safety account tweeted that all X users have the ability "to control whether their public posts can be used to train Grok".
Currently, you can't disable this feature in the mobile version of X, so if you want to deprive Grok of your posts, you'll have to do it via the desktop or mobile web X page.
X’s privacy settings states:
While it's an unnerving story, one can find solace in the fact that X is not the only one that engages in such practices. When you come to think of it, we've been steadily on the internet for decades now – can you imagine how much personal data we've generated for corporations to play with and analyze?
As that mustached historical figure said: "A single personal data exploitation is a tragedy, a million personal data exploitations are a statistic". Follow me for more Monday comforting thoughts!
X users were slightly enraged because X is training its AI chatbot, Grok, on their posts by default, meaning users are automatically included unless they opt out. So, if you're an X user and haven't explicitly opted out, your posts are already being used to train Grok. Congratulations!
Nobody knows precisely when Grok began using X users' data. Earlier today, X's Safety account tweeted that all X users have the ability "to control whether their public posts can be used to train Grok".
Currently, you can't disable this feature in the mobile version of X, so if you want to deprive Grok of your posts, you'll have to do it via the desktop or mobile web X page.
To do it, you have to get in your Settings and privacy menu, then tap Privacy and safety and find the Grok option to opt out.
X’s privacy settings states:
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.
While it's an unnerving story, one can find solace in the fact that X is not the only one that engages in such practices. When you come to think of it, we've been steadily on the internet for decades now – can you imagine how much personal data we've generated for corporations to play with and analyze?
Things that are NOT allowed: