LinkedIn and Microsoft have began training their AI with user data, without their explicit consent. (Photo illustration by Budrul Chukrut/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
YAnother major tech company trains AI models with user data by default, without informing users beforehand. LinkedIn follows the instance of Meta and X’s Grok and lets users train its AI, in addition to models from unnamed “partners.”
LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft, which also owns a big stake in ChatGPT developer OpenAI. This means the Redmond, Washington-based tech giant may even train its AI using information from the business-focused social network. After the discharge, LinkedIn clarified that the user data is not going to be used to coach basic OpenAI models, but can be passed on to Microsoft for its own OpenAI software.
Accordingly LinkedIn: “The artificial intelligence models LinkedIn uses to support generative AI capabilities may be trained by LinkedIn or another provider. For example, some of our models are provided by Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI service.”
Spokesman Greg Snapper added: “We use OpenAI models made available through Microsoft’s Azure AI Service, like other customers or users of that API service. And when we use the models available through that service, we do not send data back to OpenAI for them to train their models.”
“The opt-out model proves once again to be completely inadequate to protect our rights.”
“When LinkedIn trains generative AI models, we seek to minimize personal data in the datasets used to train the models, including by using privacy-enhancing technologies to redact or remove personal data from the training dataset.” The platform added that it doesn’t train “content-generating AI models” with data from the EU, EEA or Switzerland. The EEA is the European Economic Area, which incorporates all 27 EU members plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.
If you reside in a rustic where LinkedIn has already began using your data for AI training, you possibly can easily stop this. Go to the Privacy section in Settings and uncheck the choice “Use my data to create training content for AI models”.
However, privacy activists remain concerned about LinkedIn’s decision to permit users to coach multiple AI models. Mariano delli Santi, legal and policy officer at UK-based privacy nonprofit Open Rights Group, said: Forbes: “The opt-out model proves once again to be completely inadequate to protect our rights: the public cannot be expected to monitor and track every single online company that decides to use our data to train AI. Opt-in consent is not only required by law, it is a common sense requirement.”
He called on the UK data protection authority to “take urgent action against LinkedIn and other companies that believe they are above the law.”
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