Should you have control over whether information about you gets used in training generative AI? I’m sure lots of you reading this have heard about the recent controversy where LinkedIn apparently began silently using user personal data for training LLMs without notifying users or updating their privacy policy to allow for this. As I noted at the time over there, this struck me as a pretty startling move, given what we increasingly know about regulatory postures around AI and general public concern.

What kind of information does data privacy law actually cover? In my continuing series of columns digging deeper into the content of my recent talk at the AI Quality Conference , today I’m going to talk about how we distinguish the kinds of data that are and are not covered by the data privacy laws that are springing up around the US and globally. Different kinds of data are protected more restrictively, depending on the jurisdictions, so this is important to know if you are using data about individuals for analysis or machine learning.