Microsoft Corporation's (NASDAQ:MSTF) LinkedIn, the professional networking giant, has come under scrutiny for reportedly using user data for AI training before updating its terms of service.

What Happened: This primarily affected users in the U.S., as those in the EU, European Economic Area, or Switzerland were likely exempt due to stringent data privacy rules in these regions, reported TechCrunch, citing 404 media as the first to spot this discrepancy.

Users have an opt-out toggle in their settings that reveals LinkedIn collects personal data to train "content creation AI models." While the toggle isn't new, LinkedIn initially failed to update its privacy policy to reflect this data usage.

LinkedIn's terms of service have since been updated, but typically, such updates precede significant changes like using user data for new purposes.

LinkedIn did not immediately respond to Benzinga's request for comments.

The company uses the data to train its own AI models, including those for writing suggestions and post recommendations. LinkedIn also indicated that generative AI models on its platform could be trained by "another provider," such as its parent company, Microsoft.

How To Opt Out Of LinkedIn's Data Scrapping

Step I: Go to the "Data Privacy" section in the settings menu.

Step II: Select "Data for Generative AI improvement."

Step III: Now toggle off the option for "Use my data for training content creation AI models."

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Why It Matters: Earlier this year, AI startups OpenAI and Anthropic were accused of ignoring web scraping rules. The reported behavior of OpenAI and Anthropic reflected a larger trend among AI companies pursuing high-quality data for their models.

In April, OpenAI also received flak for reportedly transcribing over a million hours of YouTube videos for training its GPT-4 model.

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has also gained attention with its multiyear partnership with News Corp, giving it access to the media giant's news content. This deal marked a notable advancement in the AI industry's pursuit of high-quality training data.

Later in July, Elon Musk's social media platform, X, formerly Twitter, was found to be sharing user posts with xAI's Grok for training.

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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of Benzinga Neuro and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.