X added a new setting to Grok training to prevent sharing data

Well, this probably isn’t particularly surprising, since it’s a key selling point of the service, but last week, X quietly added a new explicit setting within your account options that gives you permission to allow X to use your posts and activity within the app to train its Grok AI chatbot.

As explained here, X is currently opting all users into this new setting so that X can use users’ posts and interactions with Grok to train and improve the system. That information may be shared with xAI, which is technically a third party, and so this use may or may not be subject to the existing parameters that users agree to when signing up for an X account.

This is likely why X added this more specific setting and enabled it by default. Click here to check it out for your own account.

Specifically, X is Grok Training on Public X PostsAs a means to build chatbots that are more up-to-date and informed than other providers.

X owner Elon Musk has repeatedly touted Grok’s advantages over other AI tools, both in terms of timeliness and censorship (or lack thereof), making it, at least in his view, a better model for AI development.

However, it is not yet entirely clear how X posts are being used to build the system.

For example, if X is “An AI search assistant with a humorous and rebellious spirit.X explains:

“Like most LLMs today, Grok-1 has been pre-trained by xAI using a variety of publicly available internet text data up until Q3 2023 and a dataset reviewed and curated by human reviewers – AI tutors. Grok-1 has not been pre-trained on X data (including X publicly available posts).”

The Grok-1 language model is It’s trained on X data, but nowhere in the overview does it say that X uses public X posts.

Musk said:

X’s process in this regard is somewhat unclear, which is likely why it added this new toggle, which is necessary to comply with EU regulations on data usage and also to allow users to opt out if they wish.

They just don’t advertise the fact that you can limit the data from xAI if you choose.

This makes sense, because given all the controversy surrounding Grok, it’s likely that many users will opt out, reducing X’s training data pool.

For example, Grok news headlines have repeatedly been inaccurate and misleading as the system misinterpreted X’s interactions on various topics, and given Musk’s own controversial views on certain subjects and his loose views on moderation, there is a risk that Grok will spread further misinformation and disinformation, especially in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election.

Many X users may not want their data to be included, but the current user agreement seems to make sharing user data with third parties, even subsidiaries of X Corp. (X’s parent company), questionable.

But at the same time, Musk is very keen to push the project forward in order to make the xAI initiative a more important part of his empire. He has suggested that Tesla invest $5 billion in the project to help it better compete with larger companies.

However, to maintain our key differentiator, we need as many X users as possible to have this setting turned on.

So the announcement was made quietly and will likely face increased scrutiny going forward.

Overall, I’m wondering how this was enabled, but now you can opt out of X’s use of your data if you wish.

Here you can opt out of having your account used for Grok Training.