X, formerly known as Twitter, has automatically enabled a setting that allows the company to train its Grok AI based on user posts. X has enabled the new setting by default, and the good news is that you can turn it off and delete your conversation history with the AI.
According to the platform's settings page, when the setting is turned on, X will “utilize user interactions, inputs, and results on Grok, as well as X's posts, for training and fine-tuning purposes.” X further states, “This also means that user interactions, inputs, and results may be shared with our service provider xAI for these purposes.”
The setting can't be disabled via X's mobile app, but it can be disabled on the desktop version of the social network.
To turn off data sharing in X:
Open the settings page in X on your desktop. Select the “Privacy and Safety” button. Select “Grok.” Uncheck the box.
A screenshot showing how to turn off data sharing settings in desktop mode in X. Image credit: TechCrunchImage credit: TechCrunch/Screenshot
After turning off the setting, you can delete your conversation history with the AI (if any) by clicking the “Delete conversation history” button.
Earlier this week, X owner Elon Musk said xAI had begun training its Grok large-scale language model using “the world's most powerful AI training cluster.” Musk said the AI model would be “the most powerful AI in the world by any metric by December.” [2024]By now, it is clear that Musk and X wanted to train the AI not only with powerful training clusters, but also with users’ past tweets and posts.
X isn't the only social network using user data to train AI. Meta notified EU and UK users last month of changes that would allow public content on Facebook and Instagram to be used to train AI. The company eventually caved to regulators' pressure and paused the plan.