AI is increasing social media presence in new ways every day To stay relevant, LinkedIn has jumped on the bandwagon The Microsoft-owned company, which is primarily used by networking professionals, has introduced several AI-powered features

These features are primarily available in LinkedIn Premium and include a job seeker chatbot, AI-powered profile creation assistance, and tools for recruiters such as automated messaging and AI-generated job postings

While users are accustomed to LinkedIn enhancing the site to improve their networking efforts, it is safe to say that most of us did not expect to be left in the dark regarding the company's data practices

The current backlash stems from LinkedIn's Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Blake Rawitt, provided an update on “trust and security,” explaining that LinkedIn is collecting data from user profiles and posts to improve its AI tools Unfortunately, this data collection was done automatically without users' explicit consent You can read more about it here

Despite LinkedIn's efforts to improve its platform with AI, including features that many users enjoy, the automatic data collection dismayed users The platform, which has about 830 million members, was not up front about how deeply user data was integrated into its AI training model, leading to a wave of privacy and data security concerns

On the bright side, LinkedIn members in the European Union can rest assured that LinkedIn does not collect data from EU users for AI training purposes, thanks to strict data privacy laws, particularly the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) In fact, LinkedIn has stated that it has no immediate plans to collect such data from EU users

LinkedIn's use of user data for AI training is part of a larger trend in the tech industry to use data from millions of users to advance AI As AI grows and evolves, companies employing similar tactics will increase This raises important questions about transparency, consent, and data privacy Now is the perfect time to read the small print and keep an eye on what you share on social media platforms

While you cannot take back data that has already been shared, it is relatively easy to opt out of LinkedIn's data collection for future AI training If you are concerned about how your data is being used, we recommend taking the following steps to prevent LinkedIn from further using your information to train AI models