Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) has permanently stopped using EU users’ data to train its Grok Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI). This exclusion applies to public posts of users in the European Union and European Economic Area only.
Elon Musk bows to pressure from European regulators
Launched earlier this year, Grok is Elon Musk’s answer to Google Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It can generate text and images based on text prompts.
These Gen AI engines have been scraping data from the internet, and several platforms have objected to this process. Although some Gen AI platforms are accused of ignoring these warnings, others, like Grok, seem to have obliged but not before it was dragged to court.
X has agreed to stop processing its EU users’ data for its Grok AI.
It has done so after Ireland’s data privacy watchdog took it to court in Ireland.
So Grok AI can’t use Europeans’ tweets. https://t.co/w6dWEOhpz1
— Adrian Weckler (@adrianweckler) September 4, 2024
Specifically speaking, X Corp. has agreed to stop processing the personal information of European users to train Grok. Interestingly, it is Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) that confirmed the development.
“X Corp. will delete EU users’ data contained in public posts on its X social media platform that were collected between May 7 and Aug. 1, 2024, from the Grok training material”.
Why is X avoiding EU users’ data to train its Grok Gen AI?
Ireland DPC office acts as the chief EU regulator for X. It has its European headquarters in the country. The commission stated it was the first time a lead EU agency has taken such an action against an online platform.
The DPC was referring to an official request it had filed in August this year. The commission had officially asked Ireland’s High Court to stop X Corp. from processing EU users’ data to train the company’s AI model.
To back its complaint, Ireland’s DPC cited EU data protection restrictions. It reportedly claimed X’s actions “risked jeopardizing users’ rights”.
The Record by Recorded Future | European data privacy watchdog closes case against X over its Grok AI bot https://t.co/grqu3waUnF
— Kimberly (@StopMalvertisin) September 4, 2024
X promptly agreed to temporarily suspend the use of the EU users’ data to train Grok. The company has extended the suspension to become permanent this week. Consequentially, the DPC has decided to drop the court proceedings.
X may have indirectly violated EU users’ privacy and EU data rules. This is because X offered EU users a choice to deny the use of their data. However, this was an “opt-out” choice and not an “opt-in”. In other words, X was using EU users’ public posts to train its Grok AI. EU users had to specifically deny X permission.
2024-09-05 15:09:09