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Google has updated its privacy policy in which it stated that it can use publicly available data to help train its artificial intelligence (AI) models.

The tech giant changed the wording of its policy over the weekend and switched "AI models" for "language models".

In its privacy policy archive page, Google updated the changes, saying: "For example, we may collect information that’s publicly available online or from other public sources to help train Google’s languageAI models and build products and features like Google Translate, Bard, and Cloud AI capabilities. Or, if your business’s information appears on a website, we may index and display it on Google services."

With the new policy, Google is informing people that anything they publicly post online can be used to train Bard, future versions and other generative AI products it develops.

Critics have expressed concerns about companies' use of publicly available information to train large language models for generative AI use.

Last month, the Sam Altman-run OpenAI sued in a class-action lawsuit in the US for allegedly stealing data from the public to train its AI chatbot ChatGPT.

The lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of California, alleged that OpenAI used “stolen data to train and develop” its products including ChatGPT 3.5, ChatGPT 4, DALL-E, and VALL-E.