LogInThe updated policy will also apply to the Pins you shared before it takes effect.
Sadly, in this day and age, whenever a company updates its Terms of Service, it's rarely good news for regular users. Pinterest, a visual discovery platform and a source of reference for many Digital Artists, has not become an exception, revising its ToS, Privacy Policy, and other policies to introduce several concerning, no surprises here, its use of user data for generative AI training.
As per the platform's updated Privacy Policy, Pinterest can use your information to train, develop, and improve its technology, such as machine learning models, as well as features powered by generative artificial intelligence, citing their body type technology, trained on images in Pins, as an example.
Besides the obvious images and videos shared as Pins on the platform, the company also collects your account information, precise location, contacts, device information, log data, cookie information, and more. While the clause about machine learning training has been part of the current Privacy Policy, the section specifically about generative AI was only added with the latest update, reflecting the ongoing drive of many companies to collect as much user data as possible.
What's more, although the new policies don't take effect until April this year, they apply to all content "regardless of when Pins were posted," meaning that, in practice, everything ever shared or to be shared on Pinterest could potentially be used to train AI models. Below is a comparison of the relevant clause in the current and upcoming Privacy Policy:
Besides the Privacy Policy, Pinterest's Business Terms of Service are also being updated. The infamous "non-exclusive license" clause, which we've seen in Adobe's, Twitter's, and Steam's ToS, now expands the range of actions the company can do with your content, adding "monetize, download, translate" to the list.
The wording of the section has also been slightly changed, now stating that "nothing in these Terms entitles you to any payments or the right to share in any revenue from any monetization of User Content." Together, these changes mean that, regardless of how Pinterest uses your images and videos – whether for ads, generative AI training, or anything else – the company can monetize your content, but you won't receive any compensation should you agree to these terms.
The changes are coming into effect on April 30, 2025. You can find the full list by clicking this link.
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