ronan farrow says grindr is training its ai on your photos by default. go to settings. we'll wait.

Photo: Fuzheado, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The man who brought down Harvey Weinstein has turned his attention to your torso pics.

"Grindr is training its AI on your photos, your age, and your taps by default, without asking," Ronan Farrow posted on Tuesday, with a video showing, in his words on Instagram, "where the app buried the off switch."

Grindr's own fine print draws the line in an interesting place. Its privacy page on its AI, which it calls gAI, says your messages are not used for training "unless you've explicitly opted in," and that sexual preferences, chats and tribes need "your explicit, separate permission." Everything else gets the other treatment: "If you opt out of AI training, your data will no longer be used for this purpose from that point forward." Opt out, as in it was already on.

That training feeds EDGE, Grindr's AI-powered subscription, which Farrow says the company has tested at prices "as much as $350 a month." In his caption he also points out that "numerous countries criminalize same-sex relations, so being outed through your data can be dangerous," and that Grindr agreed last month to pay £26 million to settle UK users' claims, which we covered at the time. The company admitted no liability.

Grindr told Queerty that users "can opt-out at any time of having their information used for AI-powered features and AI training." The Electronic Frontier Foundation said back in June that Grindr should stop training on personal data without opt-in consent.

Where's the switch? Farrow and Grindr agree: Privacy Settings. Go now, before your gym selfie becomes somebody's training data.