“Google’s Revised Privacy Policy Opens Doors to AI Training Using Publicly Available Data”
Google recently introduced updates to its privacy policy, granting itself the permission to leverage publicly accessible information for training its diverse range of AI products and services.
Implemented on July 1, the alterations in the privacy policy can be compared to prior versions through a link shared on the platform’s update page.
The latest version explicitly states that Google’s AI models, namely Bard and Cloud AI capabilities, may be trained using “information that’s publicly available online” or sourced from “other public sources.”
This update serves as a clear indication to the public and Google users that any publicly uploaded content can now be utilized in the training processes of the company’s present and future AI systems.
Notably, this move by Google follows closely after OpenAI, the developer behind the widely used AI chatbot ChatGPT, faced a class-action lawsuit in California. The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI scraped private user information, including social media comments, blogs, Wikipedia, and other personal data, to train ChatGPT without obtaining necessary consent. As a result, the legal action argues that the copyrights and privacy rights of numerous internet users were violated.
Moreover, there have been speculations linking Twitter’s recent adjustments to the number of tweets accessible based on account verification status to AI data scraping concerns. According to Twitter’s developer documentation, rate limits were enforced to manage the volume of requests made to Twitter’s application program interface.
Elon Musk, the former CEO and owner of Twitter, recently expressed his concerns on the platform, stating that it was experiencing service degradation due to extensive data pillaging.
With these privacy policy updates, Google aims to enhance its AI training capabilities by tapping into publicly available data sources while navigating the evolving landscape of privacy concerns and legal implications.
