After welcoming its 16 millionth user early Friday morning, the social media platform Bluesky addressed worries from numerous artists and content creators migrating from X.com. The company assured that it has “no intention” of using the content shared by users to train generative AI systems.
A range of artists and creators have established themselves on Bluesky, and we recognize their concerns regarding other platforms utilizing their data for training. We do not make use of your content for generative AI purposes, nor do we have plans to do so.
The Bluesky team elaborated, stating, “We employ AI internally to aid in content moderation, allowing us to prioritize posts and protect human moderators from disturbing material.” They added, “AI is also used in our Discover algorithm to enhance the user experience by suggesting posts. None of these systems involve generative AI trained on user-generated content.”
However, some users, such as Casey Johnston, highlight that the assurances provided do not categorically prevent Bluesky from changing its position in the future. This announcement contrasts sharply with the recent policy updates from X. Under the leadership of billionaire owner Elon Musk, X has revealed plans to adapt its privacy terms, enabling the platform to utilize its vast repository of user-generated content for training its upcoming Grok large language model.
This isn’t the first instance of X.com attempting to leverage its users’ contributions for profit. Earlier in July, the platform quietly adjusted its privacy policy to allow access to user data for training purposes. Most recently, in mid-October, the company went a step further by permitting third-party “partners” to train their AI models using X data unless users opted out:
“Depending on your settings, or if you decide to share your data, we may share or disclose your information with third parties. If you do not opt out, in some instances the recipients of the information may use it for their own independent purposes in addition to those stated in X’s Privacy Policy, including, for example, to train their artificial intelligence models, whether generative or otherwise.”
These policy changes are set to take effect on Friday, November 15, meaning that all public posts, including text, images, and interactions, can now be utilized to train Grok and any other models that the company may pursue. Users wishing to prevent their content from being harvested might want to consider reviewing their social media privacy settings.
