X, formerly known as Twitter, has revised its developer agreement to ban the use of its platform content for training artificial intelligence models, sparking speculation about potential AI training partnerships with third-party companies.
The updated policy explicitly prohibits developers from utilizing X’s content or its API to “fine-tune or train a foundation or frontier model.” Industry observers believe this move could be a precursor to X forging AI training agreements with external companies, drawing parallels with a recent deal between Reddit and Google.
Reddit, which has a similar policy aimed at blocking AI crawlers, recently filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, alleging that the company’s AI crawlers accessed Reddit over 100,000 times since July 2024. This development highlights the growing tension between AI companies and social media platforms regarding data access.
The revised developer agreement at X comes as Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, acquired X in a $33 billion deal in March. While the updated policy restricts external parties from training AI on X’s content, the platform’s privacy policy suggests that third-party “collaborators” may still train AI models on X’s data, provided users have not opted out.
Moreover, X itself uses user data to train its in-house AI model, Grok. This nuanced approach to AI training raises questions about data privacy and the complex relationships between social media platforms, AI companies, and user data.
