LinkedIn Reportedly Trained Generative AI Models on User Data Without Permission Before Updating Policy

LinkedIn gave an opt-out option to stop data scraping, but the terms of service reportedly did not reflect that previously.

Written by Akash Dutta, Edited by Siddharth Suvarna | Updated: 19 September 2024 14:26 IST

LinkedIn Reportedly Trained Generative AI Models on User Data Without Permission Before Updating Policy

Photo Credit: Reuters

The updated terms of service of LinkedIn now highlight that it will train AI on user data

Highlights

Many LinkedIn users reported noticing a new setting about AI training
Netizens criticised LinkedIn for automatically opting in users
LinkedIn is training AI for writing suggestions and post recommendations

LinkedIn, the social networking site for professionals, was reportedly scraping user data on the platform without informing the users first. The Microsoft-owned company has now updated its terms of service to reflect this, however, it continues to automatically opt-in users unless they manually find and toggle off the setting to opt-out. Several netizens took to social media platforms to criticise the move by the company. Notably, the updated policy highlights that the AI is being trained for features such as writing suggestions and post recommendations.

LinkedIn Reportedly Trained AI on User Data Without Informing

A 404 Media report highlighted LinkedIn's data scraping before the company updated the policy informing users about its action. Many users also posted on the platform on Wednesday claiming they found a new option in settings about data training for AI.

Training AI models on user data is not a new practice. Earlier, Meta admitted to training its in-house Llama models on publicly available user posts, and Google updated its policy last year to train Gemini and other AI models on publicly available web data. However, the major concern with LinkedIn is that it started collecting user data before it publicly informed users.

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Generally, the reason platforms are expected to share a prior intimation about such decisions as they can proactively opt out and protect their privacy. LinkedIn's move to not follow this protocol has resulted in netizens taking to social media platforms to criticise the move.

However, LinkedIn has now updated the policy to reflect the change. It now explains that “LinkedIn or its affiliates train or fine-tune generative AI models used to create content, including content that may be distributed or made available on LinkedIn's platform”. The Microsoft-owned company also revealed that the training was done for AI-powered writing assistant as well as post-recommendation features.

LinkedIn earlier told TechCrunch that the company used privacy-enhancing techniques to limit the collection of personal information which was used to train generative AI models. Some of the measures included redacting and removing personal and identifying information.

To stop LinkedIn from scraping data on the platform, users can click here to access the setting option and toggle it off. However, it is not certain whether the social media platform will also remove all the previously collected data from the AI models' datasets.

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Further reading: LinkedIn, AI, Artificial intelligence, AI training, Data Privacy

Akash Dutta Email Akash Dutta

Akash Dutta is a Senior Sub Editor at Gadgets 360. He is particularly interested in the social impact of technological developments and loves reading about emerging fields such as AI, metaverse, and fediverse. In his free time, he can be seen supporting his favourite football club - Chelsea, watching movies and anime, and sharing passionate opinions on food. More