Twitter/X has you automatically enrolled in training Elon Musk’s Grok AI on everything you’ve ever posted on the service. Here’s where to find this hidden setting and how to turn it off.
Find the right settings and you can train X’s Grok AI for your job.
Musk has named his AI tool Grok, and Twitter/X says it’s a humorous AI with a “rebellious streak and outsider perspective on humanity” that makes it a “unique and entertaining companion.”
Yes, I understand.
Twitter/X has also been generous in stating that it was “not pre-trained on X data (including publicly available X posts),” but this claim is outdated at best.
It may not have been pre-trained on your post, but it is certainly trained now. Without any notice to you, and certainly without your opt-in permission, Grok is now using your post to further train it.
Grok AI is a premium feature and a subscription option, but while this limits who can use it, it doesn’t limit which posts it can train on.
However, there are two ways to stop this from happening: The first is to deny permission online.
Twitter/X doesn’t yet show you where that setting is, and probably never will, so if that happens you should be notified.
You also need to do this in a browser on a Mac or PC. As of July 2024, you can’t make changes on a mobile device. Of course.
How to stop Grok AI training on a post
On a Mac, go to Grok settings and uncheck the Allow box under Data Sharing. Under Options, click Delete Conversation History.
It’s probably not worth deleting your conversation history, but you might want to do it anyway. The wording of the settings suggests that once rejected, Grok will not be able to use any posts, new or old.
But it would be hard to unlearn something that has already been learned: either the setting works and doesn’t change your conversation history, or it’s already changed and there’s nothing you can do.
Also, it’s not clear what happens if someone who checked the box retweets your post. Since they don’t have a functional press contact yet, if someone from there is reading our emails in the future and sees this, will they email us about it?
The second option is to quit the service altogether, which at least seems a lot easier than it used to be.
Ultimately, it may turn out that the only viable way to prevent Grok from using your work, or at least from using it any further, is to leave it. You have no choice but to assume that the veto setting will be respected, but this is a hidden setting in an unannounced feature, and despite vague government moves, no crackdown on the issue has been undertaken.