If you’ve ever posted a picture to social media or published a blog on a website, chances are your words, pictures or videos have been used to train generative AI models.
Tech companies have scraped countless websites and databases to harvest the vast troves of data required to teach artificial intelligence systems to recognize patterns and eventually make inferences about new information. Because the United States does not have laws regulating the use of personal data for AI training, users don’t typically know that an AI company is training on their data until someone alerts the media about a change they caught in a website’s privacy policy.
These companies have been selling user data to market research firms for more than a decade, so many of us have grown numb to the idea of our data being recirculated in ways we don’t completely understand. After all, language models aren’t designed to store information like a database; they digest the information with the goal of recognizing patterns and refining their algorithm.
Should I Opt Out of Sharing My Data for AI Training?
Users may want to opt out of AI training because their posts, prompts and files can be used in ways they might not expect. Even though AI systems do not retain information like databases, they can sometimes memorize data and reveal it through sophisticated cyberattacks. Artists and other creators may also want to shield their work from AI training, as the model may learn to mimic their style and lessen market demand for their creations.
Nevertheless, AI models sometimes memorize strings of information, and researchers have extracted personal information through inversion attacks — which use carefully crafted prompts to trick a model into divulging raw data inputs — and membership inference attacks, which deduce whether someone’s data is in a model set by observing how familiar the model appears to be when presented with pieces of that person’s data.
Artists, writers and other creators face a different sort of financial threat. If their work is used to train an AI model, that model can then mimic an artist’s signature style, regurgitate an authors’ ideas or summarize a company’s proprietary insights, effectively cannibalizing the market for their labor. Some website owners have gotten so fed up with models scraping their site that they feed web crawlers false data in hopes that AI developers will start to respect their website’s opt-out requests.
You’re not completely powerless, though. Some platforms give users the ability to opt out. But they don’t make it easy — it typically involves digging through several layers of privacy settings, which can be tedious when you’re working across numerous websites. In this guide, we’ll show you how to avoid sharing your data for AI training on social media, chatbots and other websites.
How to Opt Out of AI Training on Social Media
Social media users may be surprised to learn that their favorite platforms are using their public posts, comments and likes to train AI. Here’s how you can opt out on Instagram, Facebook, X and LinkedIn.
Instagram’s parent company Meta trains its models with users’ public posts, comments and conversations with Meta AI, but it does not use the content of private messages, according to its privacy policy. Users in the European Union can opt out of Meta sharing Instagram data for AI training, in compliance with the EU’s General Data Privacy Regulation. The company does not allow users in the U.S. to opt out of AI training, but it has said that it does not scrape posts that are set to private.
To set your Instagram profile to private:
- Go to your Instagram profile.
- Click the three horizontal lines in the top right corner (on mobile) or the bottom right corner (on desktop).
- Select “Account privacy.”
- Toggle “Private account” on.
Facebook users’ public posts, comments and Meta AI conversations are used to train Meta’s AI systems. Similar to Instagram, Facebook limits opt-out measures to users in the EU, but it does not scrape data from private posts.
To make your Facebook posts private:
- Click on your profile picture in the upper right corner on the desktop app. If you’re on mobile, you’ll click on the three bars in the upper left corner.
- Click “Settings & privacy.”
- Click “Settings.”
- Under “Audience and visibility,” select “Posts.”
- Change “Who can see your future posts?” To “Friends.”
- Click “Limit past posts,” although be aware that any previously public posts cannot be unshared.
X
Elon Musk’s company xAI uses public data from its social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, to train its Grok language models, as well as generative AI models developed by “third-party collaborators.” According to the company, this public data includes public posts, engagement with public posts and interactions with Grok, an AI assistant integrated into X.
To prevent your X posts from being used for AI training:
- On mobile, click on your profile picture in the upper left corner of the screen. On desktop, click “More” on the bottom of the sidebar on the left side of the screen.
- Click “Settings and privacy.”
- Select “Privacy and safety.”
- Under “Data sharing and personalization,” select “Grok &Third-party Collaborators.”
- Uncheck the box that says, “Allow your public data as well as your interactions, inputs, and results with Grok and xAI to be used for training and fine-tuning.”
LinkedIn, the professional networking site owned by Microsoft, started sharing user data for AI training by default in 2024. Users can opt out without impacting their visibility in recruiters’ searches.
To opt out of sharing your data:
- Click on your profile photo in the top right corner of the screen.
- Choose “Settings & Privacy.”
- Select “Data privacy.”
- Toggle off “Data for Generative AI Improvement.”
How to Opt Out of AI Training on Your Website
Creators and other small businesses may want to prevent AI models from stealing the proprietary work on their website. An artist, for example, might want to protect their unique style by preventing crawlers from scraping their portfolio website. Here’s how you can do that on Squarespace, WordPress or a custom website.
Squarespace
Squarespace, a tool that helps non-coders create websites, can notify AI companies not to scrape from your website.
To remove your Squarespace site from AI crawlers:
- Log into the dashboard for your Squarespace site.
- Select “Settings” from the dashboard on the left sidebar.
- Under “Website,” click “Crawlers.”
- Click “Block Known Artificial Intelligence Crawlers.”
- Click “Save” in the upper right corner.
WordPress
WordPress, another popular website creation tool, also offers an opt-out option.
To keep the bots away from your WordPress site:
- Log into the dashboard for your WordPress site.
- Click Settings.
- Select “Reading.”
- Under “Site visibility,” click the box for “Prevent third-party sharing.”
Custom Websites
There are several ways you can prevent web crawlers from scraping content from your website to train AI models. The first thing you should do is update the website’s robots.txt file with instructions telling crawlers not to scrape your website. If you are super protective of your content, you could also put it behind a login page or a paywall.
How to Opt Out of AI Training on AI Chatbots
While social media users may have been caught off guard to learn that their posts were used for AI training, chatbot users should be less surprised to learn that their conversations with ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude are used to improve their underlying models. People share all sorts of sensitive information with these chatbots, though, so here’s how you can prevent that data from being shared for AI training.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT collects personal data like your prompts and any files you upload, but it does not train on inputs or outputs for business users and users of its API.
To opt out of sharing your ChatGPT data for AI training:
- Click your profile icon (You must first open the sidebar if you’re using the mobile app).
- Select “Settings.”
- Go to “Data controls.”
- Turn off “Improve the model for everyone.”
Gemini
Google collects your prompts, the files you share and information from apps connected to Gemini, and it may be seen by human reviewers. Business customers’ data is not used to train models and is never reviewed by humans. Users can keep Gemini from retaining their data, but Google says it will still save chats for 72 hours to respond to you and help keep Gemini safe.
To keep your Google Gemini data out of AI training:
- Go to “Settings & help” on the bottom of the left sidebar.
- Select “Activity.”
- Turn off “Keep activity.”
Claude
Anthropic may access Claude user data to improve its AI models, and it may retain the data for up to five years. It does not train its AI models with the inputs or outputs of commercial products, such as Claude for Work, Anthropic API or Claude Gov, but if a user provides feedback, it may use those chats to train its models.
To prevent Anthropic from training on your Claude data:
- Click on your profile icon in the bottom of the left sidebar.
- Click on “Settings.”
- Select “Privacy.”
- Toggle off “Help improve Claude.”
Frequently Asked Questions
What does it mean to “train” an AI model on my data?
AI training involves using large amounts of data — like posts, images and conversations — to help models get better at recognizing patterns and making predictions.
How is my data being collected for AI training?
AI companies often scrape public websites, social media platforms and databases to gather the data needed to train their models.
Can AI models store or reveal my personal information?
While models aren’t designed to store data like traditional databases, they can sometimes memorize information — and researchers have shown it’s possible to extract data in certain cases.
