From today, professional social networking platform LinkedIn will use the public data of its users in the EU and other parts of the world to “train genetic artificial intelligence (AGI) models”, according to an announcement posted on its blog.

In a statement issued a few weeks ago, the California-based company had noted that from 3 November it would use some of its users’ data, such as “their profile data, posts and articles, replies and biographies” in order to “feed genetic artificial intelligence”.

LinkedIn, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2016 and has a billion users, primarily uses the genetic artificial intelligence models provided by its parent company’s Azure OpenAI.

Personal messages and “salary-related data” will not be used, the company clarified.

Users of the LinkedIn platform can opt out of having their data used through the data privacy settings.

LinkedIn also clarified that it will not use data from minors’ profiles.

The new policy, which is already in place in the US, is starting to be implemented today in the UK, Switzerland, Canada and Hong Kong in addition to the EU.

Since the end of May, the US company Meta (Facebook, Instagram) has also been using the public content of its users to train its genetic AI models, unless they have indicated via the relevant form that they do not wish to do so.