Google Says It'll Scrape Everything You Post Online for AI

upstart writes:

An update to Google's privacy policy suggests that the entire public internet is fair game for its AI projects:

Google updated its privacy policy over the weekend, explicitly saying the company reserves the right to scrape just about everything you post online to build its AI tools. If Google can read your words, assume they belong to the company now, and expect that they're nesting somewhere in the bowels of a chatbot.

"Google uses information to improve our services and to develop new products, features and technologies that benefit our users and the public," the new Google policy says. "For example, we use publicly available information to help train Google's AI models and build products and features like Google Translate, Bard, and Cloud AI capabilities."

[...] Previously, Google said the data would be used "for language models," rather than "AI models," and where the older policy just mentioned Google Translate, Bard and Cloud AI now make an appearance.

This is an unusual clause for a privacy policy. Typically, these policies describe ways that a business uses the information that you post on the company's own services. Here, it seems Google reserves the right to harvest and harness data posted on any part of the public web, as if the whole internet is the company's own AI playground. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Original Submission

Read more of this story at SoylentNews.