Elon Musk Says X Won’t Use Private Data, Biometric Information To Train AI Models

Amid a report of X, formerly Twitter, preparing to collect user data, including biometric information and education history, tech billionaire and X’s owner Elon Musk has clarified that the company is not going to do so, to train its machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) models, the media has reported. A user had posted on X mentioning the updated privacy policy which has added using data to train AI models, Musk said this is not correct, says a report by news agency IANS.

X’s updated privacy policy read: “Based on your consent, we may collect and use your biometric information for safety, security, and identification purposes. The new policy will be implemented from September 29.

However, Musk said that the micro-blogging platform will use “just public data, not direct messages (DMs) or anything private”. The social media network has updated its privacy policy to include carve-outs for “biometric information” and “employment history”.

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Meanwhile, a spokesperson from X was quoted as saying by Bloomberg: “This will additionally help us tie, for those that choose, an account to a real person by processing their government-issued ID. This will also help X fight impersonation attempts and make the platform more secure.”

X underwent a number of changes after being acquired by tech billionaire and SpaceX founder Musk last year. The biggest change was renaming the micro-blogging platform from Twitter to X and changing the “iconic” bird logo in favour of an “X” logo post which, the platform witnessed not a decrease in the number of downloads but saw a decline in weekly active users too.

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There was a four per cent decline in X’s weekly active users in the weeks that followed the rebranding of Twitter, says a report by TechCrunch that quoted data from SensorTower.