X halts using personal data of Europeans to train AI

X has said users have the right to opt out of having their data used to train its AI chatbot – Copyright 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.