It is now openly stated in Google’s updated privacy policy that they may utilize all of your online activity to feed Bard, a rival AI model to ChatGPT.

It’s odd that the change applies to everything you do online when in a public place rather than just the data you submit into its services.

In essence, and as shown by the pages in  charge of maintaining a historical record of this type of modification, Google has modified its terms to include Bard. The new Google policy states that the company “uses the information to enhance our services and to create new products, features, and technologies that benefit our users and the public.” “For instance, we use publicly accessible data to assist in training Google’s AI models and develop features and products like Google Translate, Google Bard, and cloud AI capabilities.” The change in claims has been confirmed by a corporate representative to The Verge.

Google did not mention Bard, Google Translate, or Cloud AI in the prior version of this text; just “language models” were referenced. This new policy is peculiar in that it appears to apply to all publicly accessible online content, including searches you conduct on questionable-looking pages with naked people on them and content hosted on Google services, not just content that is hosted on those services.

Whether or not this practice is appropriate is a topic of considerable dispute. Even sites and services as well-known as Reddit have started to take action in an effort to halt AIs’ voracious appetites for their content. According to Elon Musk, the most recent Twitter viewing restrictions that have drawn so much criticism are also intended to rein in AI development.