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There's word going around that X just enabled a setting that lets it train Grok on public tweets, as well as any interactions they have with the chatbot. That's not entirely true: a help page instructing users how to opt-out of X using their data to train Grok has been live since at least May. X just never exactly made it crystal clear that it was opting everyone into this, which is a sketchy move. If you don't want a bad chatbot to use your bad tweets for training, it's thankfully easy to switch that off.
You just need to uncheck a box from the Grok data sharing tab in the X settings. If that link doesn't work, you can go to Settings Privacy and Safety Grok. For the time being, the setting isn't accessible through X's m
X's Grok generative AI product is being integrated into the web and mobile versions of the social network, and training itself on billions of tweets thanks to an automatic opt-in for all users. (All large language model (LLM) AI tools need to be trained on massive amounts of text, which is why ChatGPT periodically releases new versions with an updated core database.)
Well, it seems like a constantly refreshed pool of conversations from some of the web's most active users was simply too much for company xAI to resist, which now automatically scans your "posts as well as your interactions, inputs, and [Grok search] results."
At the moment, X is using Grok as a chatbot for premium users and to replace human-made summaries of late-breaking news stories, with predictable issues resulting. The flippant and "rebellious" tone of the Grok model's responses has been criticized by initial users, and its reliance on constantly updated data from X seems to make it particularly susceptible to deliberate misinformation campaigns.
All X/Twitter users are automatically opted into having their data scanned by Grok, whether they pay for premium features or not. Thankfully, it's possible to opt out manually… though not particula
Microsoft has started beta testing a new feature that lets you "see your Android phone in File Explorer" and "wirelessly browse through all your folders and files, including media that is on your Android phone."
It's a spicy time to launch AI-powered search engines. Last month, Perplexity faced criticism for summarizing stories from Forbes and Wired without adequate attribution or backlinks to the publications. It also ignored robots.txt, a way for websites to tell crawlers that scrape data to back off. Earlier this week, Wired publisher Condé Nast reportedly sent a cease-and-desist letter to Perplexity and accused it of plagiarism. Also: see the Reddit drama earlier this week.
SearchGPT categorizes its results with short descriptions and visuals, but according to some early users, just like its chatbot forebears, accuracy is… lacking.
— Mat Smith
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How Microsoft is improving Windows updates is a bit technical, but builds off what Microsoft has done before. Beginning in 2021 with the Windows 11 21H2 update, Microsoft trimmed the file size of Windows updates by about 40 percent in basically two ways: separating Windows applications like Mail into their own apps, and not part of Windows; and downloading only what was needed for a Windows update.
Microsoft is taking the same approach for Windows 11 24H2, but more aggressively. Going forward, Microsoft will look at the code it released during the last feature update that was downloaded to your machine, and the code it released during the current update, and try to send over just the code that is the "difference" between them. Between each feature update, Microsoft will issue smaller cumulative updates called "checkpoints." The same technique will apply: Microsoft will send over just what's changed, and not the entire update.
The change in approach should be better for users in several different ways: smaller, quicker downloads, and probably less storage on your PC from older Windows updates that are archived there in case of a problem. The new experience will begin with Windows 11 24H2 later this year.
For now, though, Windows 10 and users running older Windows 11 machines will experience business as usual. "If you are running other versions of Windows 10 or Windows 11 (earlier than version 24H2), the process of updating will be similar to previous monthly updates or annual Windows 11 feature updates," Microsoft
