The decision by the administration of the social network X to open user publications to Elon Musk’s startup xAI for training artificial intelligence on the basis of presumption of user consent may violate European standards for protecting citizens’ privacy, reports Financial Times.
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Yesterday, X users discovered that they had “given consent” for their posts on the site and their conversations with the Grok chatbot to be used to “train and fine-tune” xAI’s AI. In reality, users had not explicitly given their consent in advance. It can only be revoked in the desktop web version of X, and there is no such option in the mobile apps yet.
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), the regulator responsible for ensuring that big tech companies comply with European privacy rules, said it had been in discussions with X for months about the company’s plans to use user data to train its AI. Just on Thursday, the agency sent the company a series of questions, some of which focused on ensuring “transparency for users.” “When they started[collecting user data to train AI]it was a surprise to us,” a DPC spokesperson said. On Friday, it sent X more questions to “clarify” the situation.
There is an opinion that the X administration violated the norms of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) with its actions. The document requires that before collecting user data, companies disclose the reasons for their actions and obtain consent from users. If the Irish regulator begins an investigation into a possible violation of the GDPR, the social network may face punishment. In June, Meta✴ Facebook has abandoned plans to train its own AI on posts from European users✴ and Instagram✴ because of the threat to violate the GDPR, but calling the measure “a step backwards for European innovation and competition in AI development.”
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Since buying Twitter (now X) in 2022, Elon Musk has faced scrutiny from regulators around the world as he has drastically cut staff, including moderators, and made other changes to the company. The social network is currently under investigation for allegedly violating Europe’s Digital Services Act over moderation and transparency issues.
“All X users have the ability to control whether their public posts can be used to train Grok, the AI search assistant. This option is in addition to your existing controls for whether all of your interactions, inputs, and results related to Grok can be used. This setting is available on the web platform and will soon be rolling out to mobile devices,” it says. publication security account X.
Musk is eager to catch up and release an AI that rivals OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, and X’s user data resource will give xAI an edge, though Grok is only available to premium subscribers. Musk’s companies are increasingly integrated with one another — he is currently seeking Tesla’s board approval to invest $5 billion in xAI, for example. Some investors in the startup cite synergies with the billionaire’s other projects as a major advantage, while others have expressed concerns about potential conflicts of interest.
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