News: 1729268771

  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

X to allow third parties to train their AI models with social media users' data

(2024/10/18)


Elon Musk's social media mouthpiece X (formerly known as Twitter) has updated its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy to direct disputes to a federal court in Texas and allow third parties to train AIs on user posts.

The [1]updates will allow "third-party collaborators" access to user data, although it appears there will be some form of opt-out added. The specific paragraph reads:

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 does not clarify the setting for opting out of data slurping. There is an option for data sharing with [2]business partners , but this seems [3]more about advertising than anything else. No doubt there'll be something specific before long, which is opt out by default.

The change to X's privacy policy comes into effect on November 15, 2024, and follows a growing trend of technology companies seeking to add revenue streams. For example, earlier this year, [4]Reddit signed an AI training deal with Google after a paywall was thrown up around its API in 2023.

Goodness knows X could do with an additional revenue stream after several significant brands opted not to use the platform for advertising following its transformation under the leadership of Elon Musk. Infamously, Musk told advertisers to [5]go "f$ck themselves" in 2023, which was undoubtedly a contributing factor to the exodus of advertisers. That, and allegedly seeing their brands next to questionable content.

[6]

And who could forget the time he [7]threatened to sue Microsoft for allegedly using public Twitter data to train AI models, presumably referring to OpenAI's ChatGPT, although he ultimately did not do this. As we noted at the time, any model trained on public internet data might have ingested information via Twitter's API, which had historically been free until Musk started charging for API access.

[8]Musk tells advertisers to 'go f**k' themselves as $44B X gamble spirals into chaos

[9]Twitter engineer calls out Elon Musk for technical BS in unusual career move

[10]Elon Musk's X isn't important enough to feel the full force of EU regulation

[11]Elon Musk's disaster relief promises: Should we believe the hype?

Also lurking in X's updates is a "Liquidated Damages" section in the [12]Terms of Service , which appears to be aimed at anyone seeking to scrape content from the platform. Access more than 1,000,000 posts in a 24-hour period, and X will demand $15,000 per million posts.

And if you have a dispute? It's off to Texas, specifically the US District Court for the northern district of Texas.

[13]

While a move to Texas is not unexpected, considering X has [14]moved its headquarters from San Francisco to the state, the selection of the northern district of Texas is curious, since X is now headquartered near Austin, Texas, which is covered by the western district of Texas US District Court. Some have theorized this is because the northern district is the seat of more conservative, business-friendly judges than the western district - [15]criticizing it as "judge shopping." ®

Get our [16]Tech Resources



[1] https://x.com/en/privacy

[2] https://x.com/settings/data_sharing_with_business_partners

[3] https://help.x.com/en/safety-and-security/data-through-partnerships

[4] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/22/reddit_google_license_ipo_altman/

[5] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/30/musk_murders_x/

[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZxLagzfmiQq7f-id6OBTXwAAARU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0

[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/20/twitter_microsoft_api/

[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/30/musk_murders_x/

[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/14/musk_twitter_rpc_spat/

[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/17/eu_x_dma_regulation/

[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/17/opinion_column_elon_musk/

[12] https://x.com/en/tos

[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZxLagzfmiQq7f-id6OBTXwAAARU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[14] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/17/musk_california_laws/

[15] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/17/elon-musk-x-terms-of-services-texas

[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/



Going to be fun

PCScreenOnly

To see what ai comes up with after being on xitter.

Re: Going to be fun

BinkyTheMagicPaperclip

If they thought various AIs were racist before, they've seen nothing yet!

Re: Going to be fun

Anonymous Coward

He'll wrap it all up in at 'Project 2028' banner.

This is his fake project to tempt democratic voters into switching sides. This is pure election interference but his $65M goes a long way towards making it immune from the FBI etc.

Re: Going to be fun

Anonymous Coward

Tay 3.0

Lets just hope the doomsayers are wrong about AI enslaving the human race or we will really be in the shit.

Re: Going to be fun

vtcodger

I wouldn't worry too much about an AI agents trained on Twitter posts enslaving humanity. With that background, odds are that they will be utterly demented as well as spectacularly incompetent.

Just what we need

steelpillow

Fantastic! This is going to play so well into cleaning out abusive bias and political propaganda from Big Datasets. Can't wait to train my social AI on X. I am over the moon Mars.

So...

Mentat74

X gonna give it to someone else ?

Re: So...

Anonymous Coward

If by 'it' you mean ai bro syphilis, yes.

Russia and n korea

Omnipresent

allowing users information to be turned against them in a massive citizen "pyramid scheme".

FYP

Garbage in, Garbage Out

Androgynous Cow Herd

The current AI Hypecopalypse posits that large training sets have high value.

So high, in fact, that training sets are generated from other training sets.

AS I quickly descend into a greybeard curmudgeon, I cannot help but wonder what value at all would come from Xitter as a training set in the first place - WTF are you training for, Narcissistic Personality Disorder - or just how to be a clickbait journalist in the 21st century?

Artificial Intelligence = genuine bullshit.

Re: Garbage in, Garbage Out

steviebuk

They're learning from my early posts from 2009-2010 that, in a piss take of others genuine "Sitting down to eat dinner" "Getting in my bath", I spent a few months walking to work with posts of the sea " Going to work"...."Going home " it was riveting.

Omnipresent

Ish is stupid, and a very few are getting paid stupid money. Why would they quit? Would you rather get rich quick from russia, or keep struggling with a real job? Most don't realize it always comes back to a real job. Your robot will only hide you for so long.

dlc.usa

Methinks we will need new words to connote the new levels of irrationality and hallucination that will ensue.

Fonant

"BullXhit", perhaps?

dlc.usa

That needs to include a strangely capitalized "AI", I suggest. Perhaps just "XAI" would suffice, but then there's the pronunciation standard to consider, unless those letters are deemed silent.

Omnipresent

I prefer "ex twit".

dlc.usa

Perhaps XAI or AIX as a suffix or prefix pronounced "mad" would fill the bill; e.g., AIXthink (yes, I am aware to the connection to IBM).

TheMaskedMan

"The updates will allow "third-party collaborators" access to user data"

Hmm, what data? If it's just xeets, I don't see a problem - if you post stuff on social media, you're pretty much giving it away, although I dread to think what an AI trained on that festering heap of mindless BullXhit (thank you Fonant, I like that!) would be like.

But is it just xeets? "User data" could mean anything, and without some clarification Xitter users might be justified in being a little concerned - particularly those who have foolishly provided genuine names etc.

Knowing Musk

DS999

He'll tell his team to just ignore the setting and sell all the data. If it gets out that that happened, he'll claim it was a bug and go into his persecution mode if anyone dares question his word.

Heck, I could see him charging a premium for the data of users who have "opted out" as the consumers of such data would probably pay me to get at the stuff from unwilling participants they can't collect data from on other platforms that will obey user settings.

Juristiction

MachDiamond

Elon may be setting himself up for more costs as it should be easy to make claims of improper venue against X. If a case is file in Northern Texas, fees have to be paid, attorney billable hours, etc. I expect a motion to move venues would be granted regardless of the T&C's since if neither side has a 'presence' in that district, the court may declare it burdensome on one side of the other. For many torts in the US, the plaintiff is required to file in the defendant's district. If I booked a shared office space in Alaska and had in my T&C's/contracts that all suits will be heard in an Alaskan court, I would be putting an unfair burden on defendants. Most people in the US don't realize just how far from the "lower 48" Alaska is. Miami to Anchorage is a 10 hour flight, weather permitting. One could drive the 5,000 miles. I use this as an example as it was brought up in a book I really like in reverse. You make your business address officially in Alaska and if anybody wants to sue, they have to file there which might be too costly for them to bother. It's a way to cut down on nuisance suits.

The lights are on,
but you're not home;
Your will
is not your own;
Your heart sweats,
Your teeth grind;
Another kiss
and you'll be mine...

You like to think that you're immune to the stuff
(Oh Yeah!)
It's closer to the truth to say you can't get enough;
You know you're gonna have to face it,
You're addicted to love!"
-- Robert Palmer