Google’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools have been updated, and its new privacy policy clearly states that the company has the right to gather information from your online posts to enhance its AI capabilities.
Anything you write online can now be considered Google’s property, stored somewhere within their chatbot systems.
According to Google’s updated policy, the company uses gathered information to improve their services and develop new products and features for the benefit of users and the public.
“Publicly available data is utilized to train Google’s AI models and create products like Google Translate, Bard, and Cloud AI capabilities,” states the new Google Policy.
According to reports, Google employees have been instructed to dedicate time to resolve issues with their AI system called ‘Bard,’ while OpenAI has temporarily paused the ‘Browse With Bing’ feature on ChatGPT due to users finding ways to bypass paywalls.
Thankfully, Google keeps a record of changes made to its terms of service. The revised policy outlines additional ways in which your online content may be utilized for Google’s AI tools.
The previous policy mentioned the data being used for “language models,” but now it specifically refers to “AI models.” Additionally, while the old policy only mentioned Google Translate, Bard and Cloud AI are now included.
This privacy policy clause is unusual as it extends beyond a company’s services and encompasses data posted anywhere on the public web.
It suggests that Google has the right to collect and utilize information from the entire internet as part of its AI endeavours.
This practice raises intriguing privacy concerns. While it’s commonly understood that public posts are accessible to all, the implications of writing something online have changed. It’s no longer just about who can see the information but also how it can be used.
According to The Verge, “To protect their data from unauthorized harvesting, popular social media platforms Twitter and Reddit have implemented significant measures. These platforms host extensive amounts of publicly available information, and their recent changes to APIs and restrictions have faced strong opposition from their user communities. These anti-scraping measures have had a detrimental impact on the fundamental user experiences on Twitter and Reddit.”