X, formerly known as Twitter, has updated its developer agreement to prohibit the use of platform content for training artificial intelligence models. The revised policy specifically states that developers cannot utilize content from X or its API to “fine-tune or train a foundation or frontier model.”
Industry observers suggest this policy change could pave the way for X to pursue AI training agreements with third-party companies. This move is reminiscent of a recent deal struck between Reddit and Google for similar purposes.
Reddit, which also maintains a policy aimed at blocking AI crawlers, recently filed a lawsuit against Anthropic. The lawsuit alleges that Anthropic’s AI crawlers accessed Reddit more than 100,000 times since July 2024.
Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, acquired X in a deal valued at $33 billion on paper in March. While the updated developer agreement restricts external parties from training AI on X’s content, X’s privacy policy indicates that third-party “collaborators” may still train AI models on the site’s data, provided users have not opted out. Additionally, X itself employs user data to train its in-house AI model, Grok.
