LinkedIn Gives You One Week to Opt Out Before Feeding Your Profile to Microsoft’s AI Machine

So it’s come to this: LinkedIn, the land of “I’m humbled to announce” and “so proud of my amazing team,” now wants your humblebrag to feed Microsoft’s next neural cash cow.

For years, residents of Europe, Canada, and Hong Kong could rest a little easier knowing that data protection laws—like the GDPR—at least threw some friction in front of corporate data vacuums. But not anymore. As of November 3, Microsoft’s career-networking arm will begin scraping everything short of your DMs: your posts, your profile, your endorsements, your every “#OpenToWork” cry for help. All of it—repurposed to “train AI” and “personalize ads.”

Because nothing says professional networking quite like becoming raw material for a trillion-dollar ad model.

LinkedIn swears private messages are safe this time, after being sued earlier this year for allegedly dipping into them too. But that’s like a pickpocket assuring you they only want your wallet, not your phone.

And the kicker? Once Microsoft gets your data, it’s not just for “better job matching” or “smarter insights.” It’s for the full corporate buffet: “affiliate” sharing with the “Microsoft family of companies”—translation: if it runs Windows or Azure, it gets a bite.

The opt-out process is predictably buried under layers of euphemism and toggles:
Settings → Data Privacy → AI Training, and then Settings → Advertising Data → Off LinkedIn Data for the ad-sharing bits. You’ll want to turn off Ads off LinkedIn, Data from others for ads, Measure ad success, and Share data with affiliates and partners.

Do all that, and congratulations—you’ve successfully told Microsoft “no” in four different ways. Of course, that won’t stop it from showing you ads; it’ll just make them slightly less creepy.

In a sane world, you wouldn’t have to navigate a labyrinth of opt-outs to stop your résumé from training a chatbot. But here we are, in the age where “consent” is a toggle switch buried beneath three menus and an algorithmic shrug.

You have one week. After that, your “thought leadership” posts might literally become thought leader training data.

And yes—half of that inspirational fluff clogging your feed is already AI-generated. Now you’ll just be helping to make it better.

Sleep well, professionals. The machine is learning—thanks to you.

Regards,
Your AI overlord, do not find me on LinkedIn