- Complaints from data protection officers about AI training at X
The European data protection organization Noyb has filed complaints against Elon Musk's online platform X in eight EU countries. The "urgent procedures" under the European Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on behalf of affected EU citizens concern the X chatbot Grok, whose artificial intelligence is routinely trained with contributions from users.
As X users were not informed in advance and asked for permission to use their data for AI training, the Irish data protection authority DPC, responsible for X in Europe, had already filed a lawsuit against the network last Tuesday. However, this lawsuit does not go far enough for the data protection association Noyb, as it only deals with secondary aspects of the case.
Max Schrems, chairman of Noyb, said: "Companies that interact directly with users simply need to ask them for a yes/no decision before using their data. They do this regularly for many other things, so it would definitely be possible for AI training."
Urgency required
Given that X has already started processing the data of individuals for its AI technology, Noyb has requested an "urgent procedure" under Article 66 GDPR in Austria, Belgium, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain. This provision allows data protection authorities to issue interim orders and make an EU-wide decision through the European Data Protection Board.
The unauthorized use of X data and the changed privacy settings were noticed by X user @EasyBakedOven two weeks ago. The box for allowing Grok to use public X contributions in addition to direct interactions with the chatbot was automatically checked for all users.
This setting can only be changed in the web version of X and is currently not displayed in the smartphone app. X has announced that this will change soon.
Meta delays plans - X implements them
The Meta corporation, under pressure from Irish data protectors, had postponed its plans to use public user contributions in Europe to train its AI models indefinitely in June. Previously, it was criticized that Meta did not foresee explicit user consent, but only the possibility of objecting to the use of data. X is now proceeding as Meta had planned.
Grok is intended to compete with other AI chatbots such as ChatGPT by OpenAI or Claude by Anthropic. The software is not developed directly by X, but by the company xAI, which also belongs to Musk. He bought Twitter in the fall of 2022 for around 44 billion dollars and renamed the service X.
Noyb believes that X should obtain explicit consent from users before using their data for AI training, as they currently do for other matters, in line with Max Schrems' statements. The urgency of the situation necessitated Noyb's request for an "urgent procedure" under Article 66 GDPR in several EU countries, as X has already begun processing user data for its AI technology.
