A few weeks ago, there was controversy because Meta, the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, wanted to use our data to train its AI. Without announcing it and without informing anyone, Twitter (now X) collects all interactions on this social network for train Grokits own artificial intelligence, although you can disable this option.
The different artificial intelligence models need to learn to offer quality results. Learning from books and different texts provides them with knowledge, but their expression is robotic. That is why we want them to start learning through our interactions.
Meta wanted to train its Llama model with the interactions we make on social networks Facebook and Instagram. As it violates European privacy legislation, you can prevent it. Elon Musk has started training his LLM Grok model using interactions on social network X.
Elon Musk’s AI Grok monitors everything you do on X
Training a model to express itself like a person is quite complicated. It requires, precisely, that it interacts with them and that they learn. But there is a simpler mechanism: that it learns through interactions on social networks.
Without warning anyone or announcing it, Elon Musk has given Grok access to all our interactions on X. This change has been detected by several users, who have come across it by chance. But the biggest problem is that Elon Musk’s platform has not informed the European authorities, violating current legislation.
The positive part of all this is that we can easily disable data collection. However, this option is very hidden and can only be disabled from the browser version, not from the application, since it does not show the option. To disable monitoring to train AI you must follow these steps:
- Access X through your preferred browser.
- In the left column, we must access the “More options” section.
- Within the submenu we will go to the “Settings and privacy” section.
- Once inside, we must enter the “Privacy and security” section.
- Scroll down and one of the last options will be “Grok” and we enter it.
- We need to uncheck this box and the monitoring will, in theory, stop.
This action could firstly lead to a loss of trust in a social network that currently has a poor reputation. It could also create problems for the company for violating the GPDR legislation, which protects the privacy of Europeans.
On the other hand, TechCrunch reports that Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), which oversees X’s compliance with the GDPR, is surprised by the decision. They point out that they are in active communication with Elon Musk’s social network.
Remember that Meta has already had problems when trying something similar on its main social networks. At least, Zuckerberg’s company gave notice in advance and allowed users to object. Musk has done what he always does, whatever he wants without caring about the legal consequences.
We imagine that we will continue to talk about this issue in the coming weeks, because the EU will take action on the matter. We will see how Musk comes out of this, we assume that as always, he will say the first thing that comes to his mind on his social network and release some unfunny memes.