LinkedIn has ceased collecting data from U.K users for AI

Linkedin, which belonged to the processing of user data to teach artificial intelligence, was confirmed for the landscape of UK guards for data protection. According to the information, Steven Almond, the executive director of the risk risk of the office of the commissioner, wrote on the Friday statement: His user in Britain. In anticipation of additional exchanges with ICO, Linkedin confirms that he has paused such model training. 

Eagle eyes confidential experts are already aware of Linkedin's silent assembly. This noticed that this was held in a privacy policy after a negative reaction to accepting information from people to train in a European list in a local European list. As he says, this does not deal with local users for this purpose.

"Currently, we do not provide training to generate AI according to participants in Europe, Switzerland and British, and do not provide institutions to these regions before new notifications," Main of Linkedin Blake Lawyt. The legal advisor I wrote is written in a message updated on a company's blog initially released on September 18. The professional social network previously clarified that it doesn't process information from users residing in the European Union, the EEA, or Switzerland, where the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applies. 

However, UK data protection law still relies on the EU framework, so when it emerged that LinkedIn wasn't extending the same courtesy to its UK users, privacy experts were quick to condemn it. UK non-profit Open Rights Group (ORG) has directed its anger at LinkedIn's actions into a new complaint to the ICO over non-consensual data processing for AI, but it also criticised the regulator for failing to prevent further theft of AI data. In recent weeks, Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, lifted an earlier suspension on processing its own local users’ data to train its AI and returned to collecting information from UK users by default. 

This means that users with accounts linked to the UK must again actively opt out if they don’t want Meta to use their personal data to enrich its algorithms. The ICO has previously raised concerns about Meta's practices, but the regulator has so far stayed silent as the ad tech giant resumes data collection.

In a statement released on Wednesday, ORG's legal and policy director Mariano Delli Santi warned about the imbalance that allows powerful platforms to do whatever they want with people's information, provided they hide an unsubscribe option somewhere in the settings. Instead, he argued, they should be required to obtain affirmative consent in advance.

“The opt-out model has once again proven woefully inadequate to protect our rights: the public cannot be expected to police and sue every online company that decides to use our data to train AI,” he wrote. "Consent is not only required by law, it's also a common sense requirement." We've asked the ICO and Microsoft questions and will update this report if they respond.