Opt out of AI features

[axoplasm]

I noticed this in your latest announcement about updates to the TOS/privacy policy:

• Al features. Like so many of you, we’re excited about AI, and we’re identifying ways it can enhance your product experience. We explain how we use data in our AI features.

(Sidenote: this is just terrible messaging, not everyone is “excited about AI,” and it’s basically a triggering word for a lot of people, who will write off your entire product because they have come to associate “AI” with “en**bleep**tification.”)

The only explanation of using data in AI features I could find was in the privacy policy (identical language appears in Legal Bases):

• Provide AI Features. For example, we use machine learning or artificial intelligence, including large language models, to detect anomalies on leaderboards, generate route recommendations, or provide personalized training guidance.

This is…not a lot of explanation. At a minimum I’d like to know:

• Which of my data contribute to which features. For example, do my route data contribute to route recommendations?
• Which features I see may be generated artificially. For example, which routes are created artificially and which are created by humans?
  
  

More specifically, I’d like to be able to opt in or out of AI-assisted features (i.e. prohibit the use of my data in training a model.) For example, I might want to forego appearing on leaderboards if it means my data aren’t used to train anomaly detection.

[203199]

This is very concerning to me and is making me consider if i need to mass delete the past 12 years of data from strava before the 30th. Making it default opt-in to things like this is a terrible take, especially when those AI features/uses are not explained or there is no opt-out. I am now questioning Strava's entire stance on privacy.  Sincerely, a ML engineer (which is just to say, I understand the benefits of AI, but you're missing the mark here).

[Cvh-strava]

in the EU and UK even LinkedIn have found that opting users in to using their data for generative AI is not ok. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy89x4y1pmgo
If an opt out doesn’t appear, then I guess the ICO needs to get involved.

[jemaleddin]

I for one am not excited about having my data lmined and exploited so I can get goofy advice I don’t want from a network of computers using tremendous amounts of energy. I’m sure that Strava is hoping to cash in on the “AI” craze, but not allowing a method to opt out sucks.

i just started using Strava in the last year and have had a lot of fun connecting with friends in the local cycling community, but as a person who bikes in part for environmental reasons, lighting the rainforest on fire to get advice and suggestions of dubious value makes me want to quit the service.

[jbattermann]

I mostly agree with @axoplasm. I am not sure why such an odd phrasing is necessary ("Like so many of you, we’re excited about AI" - are we? are we really? Also, see.. I am triggered) but I can phrase my position on that topic very bluntly: it's either opt-in or walk-out.

I would however not want a lesser experience of what I have without AI features. Neither a forced/default/automatic opt-in nor an "opt-in or else" attitude would come across as a good-faith decision space.

Oh and just to be clear, by opt-in I mean exactly that - off by default. Just like LinkedIn's "mishap" this week showed, companies that add and enable AI syphoning and -data use by default are not generally welcomed with joy and excitement.

If your PMs however lean on the opt-out side of things, you and "we" both know why that would be the case and would just show that maybe.. just maybe.. that "excited about AI" ain't really the case.

Let the excited ones opt-in & the rest of us just have a good ride/run/...