So you may have seen a pop-up on X this week informing you of a change to its Terms of Service, which you have to agree to continue using the app. The main change here relates to giving permission for X to use your data in its AI training and tapping through has essentially given X permission to do so moving forward.

Good job, you're not a content contributor to xAI.

You can read both the current and the upcoming X Terms of Service to get an idea, but the effective change is to the "Your Rights and Grant of Rights in the Content" section of the document. This now explicitly has wording in it about how you agree to X being allowed to use your posts as training data for its AI models.

A new addition to that section reads as follows:

You agree that this license includes the right for us to analyze text and other information you provide and to otherwise provide, promote, and improve the Services, including, for example, for use with and training of our machine learning and artificial intelligence models, whether generative or another type.

So, as an effect of these terms, which, again, you are agreeing to by using the app, you're thereby consenting X to use anything you post to the platform to train their AI models.

Can you opt out? Well, no unless you live in EU.

X is not currently using any EU user data to train its AI because Europe has stricter laws about permission to use the data, which requires X to come up with a specific setting for EU users.

If you are based out of Europe, you can then opt out from having your conversations with X's Grok chatbot included within the training set.
But that only applies to interactions with Grok, not your overall X activity-with which X describes its service above as rather ambiguous.

So, by clicking through on the new pop-up, and by continuing to use X, you're granting permission for anything that you upload to the app to be incorporated into the X and xAI data training process. Which is pretty much par for the course with social apps these days, but if you see some post being shared which describes how you can let X know you don't want them training their AI using your data, know that this is not accurate.

The permission exists in the Terms of Service, and by engaging with the app, you have agreed.

Apart from this, X has also updated its Privacy Policy with a note concerning the use of third-party data:
"Depending on your settings, or if you choose to share your data, we may share or disclose your information with third parties. If you don't opt out, in some cases 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, training their artificial intelligence models whether generative or otherwise.".

This effectively enables X to on sell your data to third party AI developers, which could provide it with another revenue stream. X increased the price of its API access last year in order to stop AI developers (most notably Elon's AI nemesis OpenAI) from "stealing" its data, and this clause gives it legal justification for future deals on similar lines.

It is still unclear how exactly a user would opt out of this, noted in the policy, but as TechCrunch notes that option may be activated once the policy is enacted next month.

Of course, also noteworthy is the fact that X has expanded the period for which it can access your data: currently, it will retain personally identifiable data for up to 18 months according to the policy, while it has settled on variable time limits for the data it uses. Given how careful companies are when dealing with information technology, one would expect their policies regarding access and retention to be precise; yet this new policy reads that in some cases, it could extend for the life of your account.

Not too earth-shattering here, since X already established that the differentiator for its AI tools would be that it was being trained on real-time data from X, which should give it the edge. So already using your X posts as data inputs to feed Grok and other AI projects; this wording just clears that up on a legal standpoint.

But if you didn't know, now you do, with those clauses built into X's user documentation.

Effective on November 15th, 2024, X introduces new Terms of Service.