But X also makes it clear that the onus is on the user to judge the AI’s accuracy. “This is an early version of Grok,” xAI says on its help page. So the chatbot can “confidently provide incorrect information, wrong summaries, or miss some context,” xAI warns.
“We encourage you to independently verify any information you receive,” xAI added. “Please do not share personal data or any sensitive and confidential information in your conversations with Grok.”
Grok Data Collection
Too much data collection is another area of ​​concern—especially since you’re automatically opted in to sharing your X data with Grok, whether you’re using the AI ​​assistant or not.
xAI’s Grok Help Center page describes how “xAI can use your X posts as well as your user interactions, inputs and Grok results for training and fine-tuning purposes .”
Grok’s training strategy carries “significant privacy implications,” said Marijus Briedis, chief technology officer at NordVPN. Beyond the AI ​​tool’s “ability to access and analyze potentially private or sensitive information,” Briedis added, there are additional concerns “given the AI’s ability to generate images and content with minimal moderation .”
While Grok-1 is trained on “publicly available data up to Q3 2023” but not “pre-trained on X data (including public X posts),” according to the company, Grok-2 is implicitly trained on all of “posts, interactions, inputs, and results” by X users, all of which are automatically opted in, said Angus Allan, senior product manager at CreateFuture, a digital consultancy specializing in AI deployment .
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is explicitly about obtaining consent to use personal data. In this case, xAI may have “ignored it for Grok,” Allan said.
This led to EU regulators forcing X to suspend training to EU users within days of the Grok-2 launch last month.
Failure to comply with user privacy laws may lead to regulatory scrutiny in other countries. While the US does not have a similar regime, the Federal Trade Commission has previously fined Twitter for not respecting users’ privacy preferences, Allan pointed out.
Opting Out
One way to prevent your posts from being used for Grok training is by making your account private. You can also use X’s privacy settings to opt out of future model training.
To do this select Privacy & Safety > Data sharing and Personalization > Grok. In Data Sharinguncheck the option that reads, “Allow your posts as well as your Grok interactions, inputs, and results to be used for training and fine-tuning.”
Even if you don’t use X anymore, it’s still worth logging in and opting out. X can use all of your past posts—including photos—for training future models unless you explicitly say not to, Allan warns.
It’s possible to delete all of your conversation history at once, xAI says. Deleted conversations will be removed from its systems within 30 days, unless the company needs to retain them for security or legal reasons.
No one knows how Grok will evolve, but judging by its actions so far, Musk’s AI assistant is worth keeping an eye on. To keep your data safe, be mindful of the content you share on X and stay informed about any updates to its privacy policies or terms of service, Briedis said. “Interacting with these settings allows you to better control how your information is handled and potentially used by technologies like Grok.”
