X will training its AI chatbot Grok on the public posts of users in the European Union and European Economic Area following pressure from a regulator in the region. Last month, the company the practice after Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) X has now made that commitment a permanent one, which prompted the DPC to end its legal action.
The DPC, which is the chief EU regulator for X, raised concerns that X may have been violating data protection rules and users’ rights. Since May, X had offered users of having their public posts being used to train Grok, implying that the company had enabled that setting for public accounts by default. Under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), however, companies are typically required to obtain explicit consent from users before processing their data. X does not have a media relations department that can be reached for comment.
Meanwhile, the DPC has urged the European Data Protection Board to weigh in “on some of the core issues that arise in the context of processing for the purpose of developing and training an AI model,” including how personal data is processed for such purposes. “The DPC hopes that the resulting opinion will enable proactive, effective and consistent Europe-wide regulation of this area more broadly,” DPC commissioner Dale Sunderland said . “It will also support the handling of a number of complaints that have been lodged with/transmitted to the DPC” about such practices.
