Elon Musk’s Social Network X has agreed to stop processing the personal information of European users to train its artificial intelligence chatbot Grok, bowing to the demands of European Union regulators.
The Irish Data Protection Commission announced on Wednesday the company’s commitment to delete personal data of EU users contained in public posts on its social media platform X that were collected between May 7 and August 1, 2024.
The dispute began in August, when the DPC filed an application with the High Court of Ireland to prevent X from processing the data for use in the company’s artificial intelligence model.citing EU data protection restrictions and claiming that X’s action risked jeopardizing users’ rights.
The Irish Data Protection Office is the lead EU regulator for X, which has its European headquarters in the country. The DPC said it was the first time a leading EU agency had taken such action against an online platform.
Following the original notification of the DPC, X agreed to temporarily suspend the use of the data to train Grok, a commitment that became permanent on Wednesday, prompting the DPC to conclude legal proceedings.
The DPC also requested the European Data Protection Board at EU level to initiate a debate on the interaction between data protection and the training of AI models, an issue that has led to disputes in recent months between data watchdogs and technology companies including X and Meta Platforms, Inc.
“The DPC hopes that the resulting opinion will enable proactive, effective and consistent regulation across Europe in this area more broadly,” “It will also assist in handling a number of complaints that have been made or transmitted to the DPC” on this matter, said DPC Commissioner Dale Sunderland in a press release.
