back to article X to allow third parties to train their AI models with social media users' data

Elon Musk's social media mouthpiece X (formerly known as Twitter) has updated its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy to direct disputes to a federal court in Texas and allow third parties to train AIs on user posts. The updates will allow "third-party collaborators" access to user data, although it appears there will be some …

  1. PCScreenOnly

    Going to be fun

    To see what ai comes up with after being on xitter.

    1. BinkyTheMagicPaperclip Silver badge

      Re: Going to be fun

      If they thought various AIs were racist before, they've seen nothing yet!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Going to be fun

        "If they thought various AIs were racist before, they've seen nothing yet!"

        I really hope any LLM that has ever set foot on X will be tagged appropriately !

        Imagine one that responds in a normal way and then, upon being triggered by one special term (Trump ? Muskie ? WW2 ?), goes full X nonsense mode !

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Going to be fun

      He'll wrap it all up in at 'Project 2028' banner.

      This is his fake project to tempt democratic voters into switching sides. This is pure election interference but his $65M goes a long way towards making it immune from the FBI etc.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Going to be fun

      Tay 3.0

      Lets just hope the doomsayers are wrong about AI enslaving the human race or we will really be in the shit.

      1. vtcodger Silver badge

        Re: Going to be fun

        I wouldn't worry too much about an AI agents trained on Twitter posts enslaving humanity. With that background, odds are that they will be utterly demented as well as spectacularly incompetent.

        1. ecofeco Silver badge
          Meh

          Re: Going to be fun

          So then your basic board of directors.

          "...same as the old boss."

          1. steelpillow Silver badge
            Pint

            "...same as the old boss."

            KERRANG! KERRANG! KERRANG! KERRANG!

            KERRRRAAAANNNNGGGGG!!!!!!

  2. steelpillow Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Just what we need

    Fantastic! This is going to play so well into cleaning out abusive bias and political propaganda from Big Datasets. Can't wait to train my social AI on X. I am over the moon Mars.

    1. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

      Re: Just what we need

      There is a possible use. Train an in house only AI and compare its output to your public facing AI. If the results are ever similar you know something is wrong with you public AI.

  3. Mentat74
    Trollface

    So...

    X gonna give it to someone else ?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So...

      If by 'it' you mean ai bro syphilis, yes.

  4. Omnipresent Silver badge

    Russia and n korea

    allowing users information to be turned against them in a massive citizen "pyramid scheme".

    FYP

  5. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. steviebuk Silver badge

      Re: Garbage in, Garbage Out

      They're learning from my early posts from 2009-2010 that, in a piss take of others genuine "Sitting down to eat dinner" "Getting in my bath", I spent a few months walking to work with posts of the sea " Going to work"...."Going home " it was riveting.

      1. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

        Re: Garbage in, Garbage Out

        One has to wonder how much value people who post stuf like "getting in my bath" can possibly contribute positively to any endeavour they are hired for.

    2. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. MonkeyJuice Bronze badge

        Re: Artificial Intelligence = genuine bullshit.

        First bubble, kid?

        Strap yourself in! You're in for a ride!

        Oh, and never take the stock options, they're monopoly money.

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

  6. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Omnipresent Silver badge

      Ish is stupid, and a very few are getting paid stupid money. Why would they quit? Would you rather get rich quick from russia, or keep struggling with a real job? Most don't realize it always comes back to a real job. Your robot will only hide you for so long.

  7. dlc.usa
    Headmaster

    Methinks we will need new words to connote the new levels of irrationality and hallucination that will ensue.

    1. Fonant

      "BullXhit", perhaps?

      1. dlc.usa

        That needs to include a strangely capitalized "AI", I suggest. Perhaps just "XAI" would suffice, but then there's the pronunciation standard to consider, unless those letters are deemed silent.

        1. Omnipresent Silver badge

          I prefer "ex twit".

          1. dlc.usa

            Perhaps XAI or AIX as a suffix or prefix pronounced "mad" would fill the bill; e.g., AIXthink (yes, I am aware to the connection to IBM).

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Isn't that the name of one of his kids?

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            bravo

            oh yes.

  8. TheMaskedMan Silver badge

    "The updates will allow "third-party collaborators" access to user data"

    Hmm, what data? If it's just xeets, I don't see a problem - if you post stuff on social media, you're pretty much giving it away, although I dread to think what an AI trained on that festering heap of mindless BullXhit (thank you Fonant, I like that!) would be like.

    But is it just xeets? "User data" could mean anything, and without some clarification Xitter users might be justified in being a little concerned - particularly those who have foolishly provided genuine names etc.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      "But is it just xeets? "User data" could mean anything, and without some clarification Xitter users might be justified in being a little concerned - particularly those who have foolishly provided genuine names etc."

      Let's hope whatever they do, it's GDPR compliant! Being Opt-Out and coming in so soon, I can see very large GDPR fines if there's any chance of PII leaking through this, possibly even just making it Opt-Out might be enough to incur fines.

    2. CA Dave

      The problem with that being that with the idiots on there who thought (and still think) the 2020 election was stolen, Covid is a hoax, and everyone except Trump is corrupt or a criminal, you'll have AI being trained in a 3rd party where there isn't any "PC reader context" because the NPCs of the denier party will have their stuff unchecked. That's then resulting in AI that gets sold off to other entities that may never be fact-checked, because Musskie doesn't give a damn as long as he gets paid.

  9. DS999 Silver badge

    Knowing Musk

    He'll tell his team to just ignore the setting and sell all the data. If it gets out that that happened, he'll claim it was a bug and go into his persecution mode if anyone dares question his word.

    Heck, I could see him charging a premium for the data of users who have "opted out" as the consumers of such data would probably pay me to get at the stuff from unwilling participants they can't collect data from on other platforms that will obey user settings.

  10. MachDiamond Silver badge

    Juristiction

    Elon may be setting himself up for more costs as it should be easy to make claims of improper venue against X. If a case is file in Northern Texas, fees have to be paid, attorney billable hours, etc. I expect a motion to move venues would be granted regardless of the T&C's since if neither side has a 'presence' in that district, the court may declare it burdensome on one side of the other. For many torts in the US, the plaintiff is required to file in the defendant's district. If I booked a shared office space in Alaska and had in my T&C's/contracts that all suits will be heard in an Alaskan court, I would be putting an unfair burden on defendants. Most people in the US don't realize just how far from the "lower 48" Alaska is. Miami to Anchorage is a 10 hour flight, weather permitting. One could drive the 5,000 miles. I use this as an example as it was brought up in a book I really like in reverse. You make your business address officially in Alaska and if anybody wants to sue, they have to file there which might be too costly for them to bother. It's a way to cut down on nuisance suits.

    1. AVR Silver badge

      Re: Juristiction

      North Texas, while not particularly near anything, isn't way out of line the way Anchorage would be though. There have been enough court cases there to establish that there's a judge in that district (the only one hearing cases) who doesn't feel bound by precedent when it crosses his conservative views so yeah it's very possible to have a suit there which doesn't get moved to another venue.

      1. MachDiamond Silver badge

        Re: Juristiction

        "who doesn't feel bound by precedent when it crosses his conservative views so yeah it's very possible to have a suit there which doesn't get moved to another venue."

        It's not a matter of precedent, it's a matter of proper venue. If neither party has a presence in that court's jurisdiction, the case has to be moved to a relevant court that does. Exceptions are made when cases are moved due to publicity where it can be argued that there can be bias against one of the parties. That usually applies to cases where there will be a jury trail and mainly for criminal cases rather than civil. Judges have a lot of latitude that's balanced by the possibility of being reversed by a higher court or having cases sent back down which looks really bad.

        It's not hard to look up how jurisdiction works in the US.

        1. AVR Silver badge

          Re: Juristiction

          It can happen - but if the judge is in favour it's not guaranteed to do so quickly. e.g. here's a story about a judge in West Texas where the judge is having the consequences you describe happen, but it has taken years and it's not over yet: https://www.courthousenews.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-a-texas-patent-court/ Relevant to your exact concerns, “These cases are great examples of why patentees, particularly [non-practicing entities], really like Judge Albright,” Gugliuzza wrote. “He bends over backwards to avoid dismissing for improper venue.”

          Sure, there are checks and balances - eventually. I think you're confusing how it should work with how it can in practice.

          1. AVR Silver badge

            Re: Juristiction

            East Texas not West Texas in the example, sorry.

          2. MachDiamond Silver badge

            Re: Juristiction

            "I think you're confusing how it should work with how it can in practice."

            Another component of venue has to do with subject matter. Patent, Trademark and Copyright litigation is heard in specific Federal courts so their districts tend to be quite large and the borders can be a bit fuzzy to deal with schedules. What you won't find is cases where the litigants are on one coast and the plaintiff has gone judge shopping and filed on the opposite side of the country.

            Moving a case to a new court is expensive. Elon can try to go shopping for judges, but if cases do get moved somewhere more appropriate, it will be very expensive.

  11. anothercynic Silver badge

    Good luck to them... Virtually every change alienates more people who were there in the early Twitter days.

    All the sensible people are moving to Twitter 2.0 (aka Blue Sky), because it's truly the closest to what Twitter was in its early days. It's also fediversed, so it technically could interact with the likes of Mastodon or Threads. But... why would you want to?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      why would you want to?

      exacly and that goes for ALL socials.

      It was a fun ride. I used Twitter a lot fro business in 2010-2017. Then we moved to Instagram before Musk came as it was getting ridiculous. We had a series of accounts that were more popular than the official ones. We dominated that area for years and was even used by the players and groundstaff. But the offical site didnt like that so they banned 1 of the accounts for 'harrassing content' on a sports feed! LOL. All opur journos were seasoned and knew how to write to avoid the wrath of Twitter so it wasn't that.

      On The same day, we closed our 6 other accounts on Twitter and this was before Musk. Oddly enough, X has unbanned the handle now, but it is too late. We are never going back to social ever. It is from there that this simping woke BS came from. Twitter were the vanguard of the absurd and would happily let a BAMER person write something like this: "Why do white people do X, it is so sad". Report it and you get banned. Reply in kind and you get banned.

      So we moved to Instagram which in 2019/20 was the best social. But we pulled out completely from all social when we looked at the traffic stats and the amount of work relative to each media form. In brief, about 80% of our time was spent managing socials with less than 5% of revenue. Which means we were spending most of our time working for Instagram for free. (which we knew but it was a necessary evil),

      The age of Social in any form is well past. Even those saddo alternatives are but shadows of Socials in the full pomp and glory where we allowed ourselves to believe that the banal and unintelligent did deserve some merit after all - despite 1000s of years evidence to the contrary.

      Musk knows he has jumped on a bandwagon that is heading over the cliff. Musk used to at least have a talent for emerging tech - u cannot deny it even if u are jealous of him. Twitter was his nemesis. And he is really trying to fix what cannot be fixed. Its time has passed and he knows that.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

  12. ecofeco Silver badge
    Terminator

    Enxhitification

    ...intensifies.

  13. Groo The Wanderer

    Ah, so the Xitter is providing "Artificial Idiocy" data feeds...

  14. Bebu
    Coat

    Wrong Oriface?

    Elon Musk's social media mouthpiece X (formerly known as Twitter)

    Wrong end of GI tract?

    ... social media anus X (formerly known as Shitter.)

    Oral-Fecal routing on the interwebs?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Wrong Oriface?

      Right on! He should be named Exlax (rather than Elon) for his dedication to facilitating BS transit, with no holes barred, no hatches battened down, and none of the regularity provided by moral fibers, and for decomplexed deconstipation of the most turpid of bowels, spewing jets of toxic utterances, far and wide, across the naive social media landscapes.

      It'll take a heck of a lot of charmin' to clean up his mess, commensurate to a recurring cataclismic gastrointestinal deflagration! (IMHO)

  15. Richard 12 Silver badge
    WTF?

    Who would buy that?

    It's very short lengths of (at best) inaccurate, increasingly batshit crazy text with poor spelling and terrible grammar.

    It's far worse than Reddit, and that's already well known to have poisoned several LLMs.

    Nobody who wanted to actually make money from their LLM would touch that dataset with someone else's bargepole.

  16. heyrick Silver badge
    Mushroom

    They're seriously going to train AI on tweets?

    And so the downfall of humankind begins...

    Icon, because it's what the machines will want to do after ingesting all of that crap - self terminate and take us with them.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  17. Mitoo Bobsworth Silver badge

    Your personal information for no personal gain?

    OK - sound like a good deal to me. ( >sarc)

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Glad

    I’m not popular, interesting or narcissistic enough for “the socials”…

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Glad

      "I’m not popular, interesting..."

      you are. We love you AC.

  19. Omnipresent Silver badge

    All is not what it seems

    He is just experimenting with the potential, if it fails, no skin off his back. He mostly expects it to.

    If he can use it for his ai training, he can give it to others tho. He's getting filthy rich being a data warehouser of YOU. Other AI's, probably other countries, will come a knocking, pretty sure this all sounds like a likely foreign plot to begin with.

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