As an impartial observer of the tech and business landscape, it’s hard to ignore the undeniable truth: LinkedIn is a frustrating platform. It combines the most aggravating elements of social networks, job boards, and office culture, and now it’s about to become even more intrusive with the introduction of AI. Following the trend of major tech companies, LinkedIn is infusing generative AI into its services, prompting users with suggestions to “enhance” their posts and messages. However, what’s particularly concerning is that the platform is scraping user data to train its AI systems, all without proper notification. Unless you’re in the EU—where such practices are prohibited—you’ve automatically opted into sharing your data with LinkedIn’s AI, and you likely weren’t even aware of it.
Adding to the frustration, LinkedIn began using this data before it updated its somewhat ambiguous Privacy Policy. The revised policy includes language that allows the platform to utilize your personal information for various purposes, including the development and training of AI models. While it’s too late to prevent the use of the data already collected, you can still take action to opt out of any future AI training. To do this, simply head to your account’s Settings & Privacy page, select the Data Privacy tab, find the Data for Generative AI Improvement setting, and toggle it off. If you want to bypass the steps, you can also click directly to the setting here.
