X is gearing up to train its AI and thus will be collecting more of your data. xAI will rely on data from your posts on the platform and information you share via Direct Messages (DMs).
“How you interact with others on the platform, such as people you follow and people who follow you, metadata related to Encrypted Messages, and when you use Direct Messages, including the contents of the messages, the recipients, and date and time of messages.” X writes on its privacy policy page.
The new privacy policy took effect on 29th September.
The social media platform will also use more of your data including phone number, email, and biometrics (e.g. face scans & eye scans). X announced last month a plan to collect data that includes user biometrics. The platform claimed biometric information will be used for safety, security, and identification purposes.
A major concern for privacy as xAI will share user data from X with third parties. This will likely put X at a crossroads with data protection authorities across the globe.
Further, the European Union (EU) is currently developing rules to limit and guide the use of artificial intelligence. The laws are likely to have influence across the world.
xAI Team was Part of the ChatGPT Team
xAI is the latest venture by billionaire and X owner Elon Musk. The company claims it is a separate company from X Corp, but will work closely with X (Twitter), Tesla, and other companies. The company was officially launched on 12th July 2023. Musk is listed as sole proprietor and the company is incorporated in Nevada.
The team is led by Mr. Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. According, to the xAI website they acknowledge having worked with DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research, Tesla, and the University of Toronto in the past.
OpenAI is the company behind ChatGPT and Elon Musk was one of its early investors. The xAI team credits itself as having been part of major “breakthroughs in the Ai field including AlphaStar, AlphaCode, Inception, Minerva, GPT-3.5, and GPT-4.” Musk has been actively poaching AI talent from Microsoft, OpenAI and Google.
Ironically, Musk had previously called for a six-month pause in developing systems more powerful than OpenAI’s GPT-4, citing potential risks to society.
“It has the potential of civilizational destruction,” he said.
