Top tips: AI is coming for your data...unless you act first!
Top tips is a weekly column where we highlight what’s trending in the tech world and list ways to explore these trends. This week, we’ll explore how to prevent our data from being used by AI.
The internet remembers everything.
The album you posted on Facebook seven years ago, the silly blog you published when you were in school, the memes you liked, the videos you viewed—everything is etched onto the internet. You may forget, but the internet remembers. There’s a lot of permanence because of the internet’s existence.
Now, cut to the advent of AI: all these memories and moments, which exist as data on the internet, are being fed into AI. And the worst part is that we can never truly know what AI is being trained on.
An investigation by Proof News, a nonprofit news studio, revealed that several of the world’s richest AI companies have utilized content from tens of thousands of YouTube videos to train their AI systems—despite YouTube’s explicit rules prohibiting the unauthorized extraction of material from the platform. The investigation uncovered that subtitles from 173,536 videos across more than 48,000 channels were collected and used by major tech firms, including Anthropic, Nvidia, Apple, and Salesforce.
By the looks of it, the amount of data companies collect from us and how they use it is mostly hidden in the fine print. It feels like things are getting out of hand and that robust regulations are needed to protect our data. But there are still a few steps we can take to protect ourselves. Below, are some ways to stop companies from using your data to train their AI:
1. ChatGPT
We all chat with ChatGPT as though it’s our personal assistant on standby. But do we really want all the information we feed it to be used for training AI? I don’t think so.
To opt out: Log in to your ChatGPT account, click on your profile in the top-right corner, select Settings, go to Data Controls, and toggle off the Improve the model for everyone option .
2. LinkedIn
Why would LinkedIn use your data for AI training? I wondered the same thing. LinkedIn uses our data to recommend jobs, suggest connections, and improve platform functionality—all of which also feeds into training its AI models.
To opt out: Click on your profile icon, go to Settings & Privacy, select Data Privacy, and toggle off the Data for Generative AI improvement option.
3. Quora
As of now, Quora isn’t using our data to train AI—but it still provides an opt-out option, just in case this changes in the future.
To opt out: Click on your profile icon, go to Settings, select Privacy, and toggle off the Allow large language models to be trained on your content option.
4. Twitter (X)
On Twitter, your data is used to train its AI assistant, Grok. The only way to opt out of AI training is by requesting it through the delete conversation option.
To opt out: Click on More in the left panel, go to Settings and privacy, select Privacy and Safety, then click Grok and third-party collaborators, and choose Delete conversation history.
AI companies are finding clever ways to use our data to train their models. As users, we must stay informed about policies, understand our data privacy rights, and keep track of how our data is being used. Companies often rely on our ignorance—and we should never let them. As AI continues to evolve, stay vigilant and take action when you don’t feel comfortable with how your data is used.