Irish court proceedings have been dropped against the social media platform X, regulators said.
ADVERTISEMENTThe Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) said this week that court proceedings against the social media platform X have ended as the company agreed to permanently suspend personal data collection for EU users to train its artificial intelligence (AI).
Social media company X changed its privacy settings in July so EU users had to opt out of having xAI use their public posts to train Grok, Elon Musk’s new AI model.
The DPC filed an emergency request to the Irish High Court about the changes because they believed privacy rights were being violated.
The DPC complaint asked X to suspend the processing of the data that had been collected between May 7 and August 1, 2024 for AI training. On August 8, the regulator said X agreed to suspend its data processing to train AI.
In a statement, the DPC “welcomed” the outcome with X, saying that it “protects the rights of EU citizens”.
Grok is X’s answer to ChatGPT and “answers almost any user question with a touch of wit and humour, while also providing helpful and insightful responses”.
However, this isn’t the end of the issue between the DPC and X, who is now asking the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), the EU body in charge of enforcing the bloc’s privacy laws, to decide whether the platform did breach any.
Dale Sutherland, Ireland’s data commissioner, said in a statement that he wants the EDPB to consider a “proactive, effective and consistent Europe-wide regulation,” about AI companies using social media posts to train their models.
‘Unwarranted and unjustified’
This is the latest setback for Elon Musk and his two companies, X and xAI, the company behind Grok.
The European Centre for Digital Rights (monikered “none of your business”) launched another nine complaints in August against xAI for allegedly breaching 16 articles of the EU’s privacy laws.
Euronews reached out to X and xAI but did not receive an immediate reply.
In an August 8 post from their Global Governance Affairs team, X called the DPC’s order “unwarranted, overboard and singles out X without any justification”.
“While many companies continue to scrape the web to train AI models with no regards for user privacy, X has done everything it can to give users more control over their data,” it continued.
X said in August they would challenge the DPC’s initial complaint with “all available avenues,” but it’s not clear what option, if any, it has chosen.
The EDPB has one month to adopt a decision by a two-thirds majority from a case’s referral date, according to their website.
ADVERTISEMENTX could be fined up to 4 per cent of global income to a maximum of €20 million or a permanent ban on data collection if the EDPB finds they have violated the EU’s privacy laws.