Google has updated its privacy policy, announcing the change on its website, “Google uses the information to improve our services and to develop new products, features, and technologies that benefit our users and the public". The new policy states, “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.”

Google records the modifications it has made to its terms of service for history buffs. The new phrasing clarifies additional ways that the internet giant's AI systems might utilize your online musings, amending a previous policy. The former policy just referenced Google Translate; now Bard and Cloud AI are listed where previously Google claimed the data will be used "for language models," rather than "AI models." This provision in a privacy policy is unusual. These policies often outline how a firm utilizes the data you post on the company's own services.

The practise brings up fresh and intriguing privacy issues. Most people are aware that public posts are just that—public. However, you now require a fresh conceptualization of what it means to publish something online. Who can see the information is no longer relevant; what matters is how it might be used. There's a strong probability that Bard and ChatGPT absorbed your 15-year-old restaurant evaluations or long-forgotten blog pieces. The chatbots may be repeating some humonculoid version of your words while you read this in ways that are unpredictable and challenging to comprehend.

Google follows these new changes in its policies after Twitter and Reddit also announced major changes in their policies. Both companies disabled the free usage of their APIs, which had previously permitted anyone to download copious amounts of posts. That was supposedly done to prevent other businesses from using the social media platforms' intellectual property, but it also had unintended side effects.