Please Stop Making Me Opt Out of AI

Tech companies are increasingly pre-enabling artificial intelligence features by default, forcing users to actively opt out rather than choosing to opt in. A recent example involved a major social media platform rolling out an AI image generation feature tied to public user accounts, which sparked user backlash and was reversed after three days. Privacy experts argue that when companies make opt-out the default, most people remain enrolled because they tend to stick with default settings, and point to European privacy law as a model where the more privacy-protective option must be pre-selected instead. Advocates call for federal regulation to protect users who are overwhelmed by privacy-impacting settings they are automatically enrolled in, rather than leaving individuals responsible for navigating complex settings menus.