Elon Musk's X will use public data to train AI models

The artist formerly known as Twitter has been in some hot water this week after Bloomberg found that the social media site would start collecting biometric details, along with job and education data, from users. Now, a newly-released privacy policy indicates that X will use this data, along with other collected personal information, to train AI models, as originally spotted by Alex Ivanovs at Stackdiary.

The privacy policy clearly indicates that the company plans to use information it collects, along with any publicly available data, to help train machine learning algorithms.

“We may use the information we collect and publicly available information to help train our machine learning or artificial intelligence models for the purposes outlined in this policy,” the privacy posting reads.

Musk has confirmed the change, but notes that only publicly available information will be collected, and not “DMs or anything private.” X no longer has a press arm, so there’s no real way to get ahold of anyone for more concrete information as to what data and information will be scooped up and what exactly it'll be used for. 

X doesn’t have any public AI ambitions, but owner Elon Musk does. He recently launched a company called, wait for it, xAI that aims “to understand the true nature of the universe”, so maybe your biometric data and related information will be used to further that lofty and totally achievable goal. Stackdiary points to text on the xAI homepage that says it “will work closely with X” to “make progress towards our mission.”

There’s another option for where this data is headed. Musk recently announced ambitions to compete with Linkedin, stating that the employment site was “cringe” and that X’s version would be “cool.” So that would explain the collection of job and education histories from its user base.

Finally, there’s a third option. X isn’t exactly raking in the advertising dollars, so selling user data would be an easy way to make some coin. However, there’s no evidence to point to that, aside from it being a standard practice in the social media world. In the past, Twitter primarily used collected user data to benefit itself, and not third parties.