Pinterest changed User Terms to train AI on your photos and data. Here’s how to opt out.
Mar. 11, 2025 — A recent article in Futurism alerted us to changes Pinterest is making in its User Terms.
According to Futurism:
A new clause, published this week on the company's website, outlines that Pinterest will use its patrons' "information to train, develop and improve our technology such as our machine learning models, regardless of when Pins were posted." In other words, it seems that any piece of content, published at any point in the social media site's long history — it's been around since 2010 — is subject to being fed into an AI model.
Your content belongs to you
To be clear: If you have a Pinterest account, this content belongs to you and is worth, collectively, billions of dollars. Reddit went public one year ago with a company valuation of $6.5 billion based largely on the perceived value of its user-generated content as a training dataset for AI models.
Pinterest is attempting to quietly corral its images and data for similar purposes. And they’re a little peeved that the public is finding out.
Per Futurism writer Maggie Harrison Dupré:
Soon after we reached out to Pinterest with questions about the update, we were contacted by a spokesperson who insisted that the update wasn't newsworthy because the update simply codifies things Pinterest was already doing. Later, the company provided us with an emailed statement.
"Nothing has changed about our use of user data to train Pinterest Canvas, our GenAI model," read the statement. "Users can easily opt out of this use of their data by adjusting their profile settings."
Pinterest was already training its AI tools with user data, as the company touches on in this Medium post about Canvas, but the practice is now codified in the platform's terms of service.
How to opt out
Here’s how to opt out and stop Pinterest from using your photos and data to train its proprietary AI models.
Select your profile (click on your icon in the upper right corner)
Select “View profile”
Select “Edit profile”
Select “Privacy and data”
Scroll down to “GenAI” and uncheck the box.
Select “Save” at the bottom right.
Related articles
