In case there was any doubt, Google's privacy policy now explicitly states that it's going to suck up all your data to train its AI
To me, artificial intelligence is a lot like magnets: I have no idea how they work. But I do understand, in a very general sense, that AI is not actually intelligent. It's just data, collected on a massive scale, algorithmically digested, and spit out in conversational tones designed to make us think that the machine is «smart.»
The popular versions of these systems, like ChatGPT, live and die based on the amount of data they can harvest, which essentially means they're reliant on you. And in case there's any doubt about what «you» means in this particular context, Google (via Techspot) has updated its privacy policy to explicitly state that pretty much anything you say or do online can be scooped up and used to train its AI models.
Naturally, Google collects data from your online activity, like the stuff you search for, the videos you watch, the things you buy, and the people you talk to, and the location data accessed through your Android mobile device. But «in some circumstances,» it also collects information from «publicly accessible sources»: If your name appears in a local newspaper article, for instance, Google may index the article and then share it with people searching for your name.
That in itself isn't new: What's changed, as can be seen on Google's policy updates page, is how Google says it can use the information it picks up from those public sources. Previously, the policy stated that publicly available data could be used «to help train Google’s language models and build features like Google Translate.» The latest update broadens the policy considerably: «We may collect information that’s publicly available online or from other public sources to help train Google’s AI models and build products and features
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