X Halts Use of European Users' Data for AI Training Amid Legal Concerns

X Halts Using Personal Data Of Europeans To Train AI

Social platform X said Friday it would work European regulators after agreeing to suspended its heavily criticized use of European users' personal data to train its artificial intelligence chatbot Grok. After Elon Musk's social platform began using personal data in public posts made by European users Ireland's data protection commission (DPC) launched a court case arguing that violated users' data privacy rights. As X has its European headquarters in Ireland, the country's data protection commission is the lead regulator in Europe for the social platform. "We will continue to work with the DPC about Grok and other AI matters as we have been doing since last year," X said in a post. That came after Ireland's Data Protection Commission said Thursday the social platform had agreed to suspend use of personal data contained in the public posts of X's users in Europe to train Grok. The DPC said X had agreed to suspend the use of users' personal data while European data regulators examine whether such processing complies with Europe's data privacy directive, the GDPR. DPC chief commissioner Des Hogan said "today's developments will help us to continue protecting the rights and freedoms of X users across the EU and EEA". The European Economic Area includes the 27 EU countries plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. In June, Meta backtracked on plans to use personal data from Facebook and Instagram posts in Europe to train its AI model after data privacy pressure group NOYB -- None of Your Business -- lodged complaints in several countries. NOYB is concerned that platforms are not giving users clear opportunities to opt out of the use of their data to train AI, as European data regulations require. X said earlier this week it had provided users with such an option. "Unlike the rest of the AI industry, we chose to provide a simple control to all X users allowing them to decide if their public posts and engagement activity could be used to improve the models used by Grok," the platform said in a statement.

X halts using personal data of Europeans to train AI

Paris (AFP) - Social platform X said Friday it would work European regulators after agreeing to suspended its heavily criticised use of European users' personal data to train its artificial intelligence chatbot Grok. After Elon Musk's social platform began using personal data in public posts made by European users Ireland's data protection commission (DPC) launched a court case arguing that violated users' data privacy rights. As X has its European headquarters in Ireland, the country's data protection commission is the lead regulator in Europe for the social platform. "We will continue to work with the DPC about Grok and other AI matters as we have been doing since last year," X said in a post. That came after Ireland's Data Protection Commission said Thursday the social platform had agreed to suspend use of personal data contained in the public posts of X's users in Europe to train Grok. The DPC said X had agreed to suspend the use of users' personal data while European data regulators examine whether such processing complies with Europe's data privacy directive, the GDPR. DPC chief commissioner Des Hogan said "today's developments will help us to continue protecting the rights and freedoms of X users across the EU and EEA". The European Economic Area includes the 27 EU countries plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. In June, Meta backtracked on plans to use personal data from Facebook and Instagram posts in Europe to train its AI model after data privacy pressure group NOYB -- None of Your Business -- lodged complaints in several countries. NOYB is concerned that platforms are not giving users clear opportunities to opt out of the use of their data to train AI, as European data regulations require. X said earlier this week it had provided users with such an option. "Unlike the rest of the AI industry, we chose to provide a simple control to all X users allowing them to decide if their public posts and engagement activity could be used to improve the models used by Grok," the platform said in a statement.

X suspends harvest of EU users' personal data to train its AI

The DPC, which acts on behalf of the European Union, said in a statement that it "welcomes X's agreement to suspend its processing of the personal data contained in the public posts of X's EU/EEA users which it processed between 7 May 2024 and 1 August 2024, for the purpose of training its AI 'Grok'."Social network X has suspended its much-criticised harvesting of European users' personal data to train its artificial intelligence program, Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) said Friday. The DPC, which acts on behalf of the European Union, said in a statement that it "welcomes X's agreement to suspend its processing of the personal data contained in the public posts of X's EU/EEA users which it processed between 7 May 2024 and 1 August 2024, for the purpose of training its AI 'Grok'." The DPC, which is working in collaboration with European regulators, has made an urgent High Court application for violation of EU rules on data protection (GDPR). DPC chairperson Des Hogan said that investigators would "continue to examine the extent to which the processing complies with the GDPR. "Today's developments will help us to continue protecting the rights and freedoms of X users across the EU and EEA," he added. The social network said it "will continue to work with the DPC about Grok and other AI matters as we have been doing since last year." Eight European countries have complained over X's data collection practices, which advocacy group NOYB (None of Your Business) said were "very likely" in breach of GDPR. NOYB said that X should have made its practices more transparent to users and obtained their explicit consent before enabling data collection.

X suspends data processing for AI model after legal complaint

The Irish data protection authority said it welcomes the agreement. Social media platform X has suspended the processing of personal data to train its artificial intelligence tools after the company was hit with legal action earlier this week, the Irish Data Protection Authority said in a statement published late yesterday (8 August). The Irish DPC on Tuesday filed a complaint at the High Court, over Grok, X's new virtual assistant available to premium and premium+ subscribers, after it expressed concerns about the processing of users' personal data from public posts of X's EU users. X previously claimed that it would allow users to decide if their public posts and engagement activity could be used to improve the models used by the AI tool. The Irish watchdog said it welcomes X's agreement to now suspend this data processing. Commissioner Des Hogan said in a statement that "the developments will help us to continue protecting the rights and freedoms of X users across the EU and EEA. We will continue to engage with all data controllers to ensure the rights of our citizens under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the GDPR are upheld." X said in response to the agreement that "people using X in the EU can continue to use Grok and control how their data is used with a simple privacy setting. We will continue to work with the DPC about Grok and other AI matters as we have been doing since last year." Earlier this week, the social media giant said that the order the Irish watchdog sought was "unwarranted, overboard and singles out X without any justification. This is deeply troubling." The company claimed that it has been proactive and transparent in working with regulators on questions related to Grok since 2023. It's not the first time in recent months that a tech platform pro-actively suspends the roll-out of its systems awaiting legal or regulatory decisions. US tech giant Meta said last month (18 July) that it will not roll-out multimodal AI models - so-called virtual assistants - in Europe due to regulatory unpredictability. And TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, in April decided to suspend the roll-out of its reward program TikTok Lite after the European Commission asked questions about the impact on the mental health of users in relation to the potential stimulation of addictive behaviour. Earlier this week, it announced that it would permanently withdraw the program from the EU market, avoiding possibly a hefty fine under the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA).

DPC says X has paused processing EU user data after court order

A recent decision by X meant that those who did not consent to their data being used to train AI chatbot Grok would have to manually turn it off in settings. The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) says Elon Musk's X has decided to suspend processing personal data of EU users to train AI chatbot Grok. The decision comes after the DPC took legal action against X (formerly Twitter) earlier this week by bringing an urgent High Court application under Section 134 of the Data Protection Act, which allows it to ask for an order to "suspend, restrict or prohibit" processing personal data. Concerns arose after X started defaulting users into allowing their posts, interactions and even conversations to be shared with Grok, pitched as a competitor to OpenAI's ChatGPT. Grok is part of xAI, an AI start-up founded by Musk to compete in the increasingly competitive sector. The decision by X meant that those who did not consent to their data being used to train Grok would have to manually turn it off, raising the eyebrows of data experts and EU regulators. DPC chair Dr Des Hogan said he welcomes the decision made by X to suspend processing personal data while the Commission worked with EU peers to examine the extent to which the processing complies with the GDPR. "One of our main roles as an independent regulator and rights based organisation is to ensure the best outcome for data subjects and today's developments will help us to continue protecting the rights and freedoms of X users across the EU and EEA," Hogan said. "We will continue to engage with all data controllers to ensure the rights of our citizens under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the GDPR are upheld." 'Potential for data misuse' Since the launch of Grok, xAI has worked on various AI models and has released some open-source offerings. It raised $6bn in May from various high-profile investors, including Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, to bring its products to market. Matthew Hodgson, CEO and co-founder of UK-based encrypted messaging platform Element, recently said that the decision by X to utilise user data for its Grok chatbot without explicit consent raises significant privacy concerns. "It is also important to remember that X is rampant with fake news and extremist views, which is not what you want an LLM trained on. This practice not only undermines user trust but also has potential implications for data misuse," he said. "There's a risk that sensitive information could be inadvertently incorporated into the AI model, leading to privacy breaches or the creation of biased algorithms." Find out how emerging tech trends are transforming tomorrow with our new podcast, Future Human: The Series. Listen now on Spotify, on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.