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The company is facing a backlash for automatically opting users into its data collection plan, as it seeks to enhance its AI models.
Microsoft-owned LinkedIn is the latest company attempting to boost its AI models with user data, though most of Europe is being avoided.
The company has updated its terms of service and confirmed it will use the data of its members to train generative AI models – or models used for “content generation”. These updates will come into effect on 20 November 2024.
LinkedIn’s updated privacy policy states that the platform may use your data to develop and train AI models, as well as “gain insights with the help of AI, automated systems and inferences, so that our services can be more relevant and useful to you and others.”
The company specified that for its AI training, it uses “privacy enhancing technologies to redact or remove personal data” from its training sets. LinkedIn also has an opt-out option for its users, though this is off by default.
The move has caused some backlash among users, with various people turning to social media to share their issues with the decision – particularly around the quiet update of LinkedIn’s policies and the fact users are opted in by default.
But LinkedIn has chosen not to collect the data of users in the European Economic Area or Switzerland. Other companies have faced legal pressure from the EU when attempting to take user data in the bloc.
In June, Meta paused plans to train its large language models using public content shared by adults on Facebook and Instagram in the EU, following intensive discussion with the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC).
Earlier this month, the DPC concluded legal proceedings it brought against X over the use of EU citizen data to train its AI chatbot, Grok. X agreed to suspend its processing of the personal data of the social media platform’s EU and EEA users on a permanent basis. X first suspended this processing last month shortly after the DPC first launched the legal action against the company.
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