When the terms of service change to make way for AI training

Last July, Google made an eight-word change to its privacy policy that represented a significant step in its race to build the next generation of artificial intelligence.

Buried thousands of words into its document, Google tweaked the phrasing for how it used data for its products, adding that public information could be used to train its AI chatbot and other services.

The subtle change was not unique to Google. As companies look to train their AI models on data that is protected by privacy laws, they’re carefully rewriting their terms and conditions to include words like “artificial intelligence,” “machine learning” and “generative AI.”