The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has opened an investigation into artificial intelligence (AI) models xAI, more commonly known as Grok, which is owned by US plutocrat Elon Musk.
The probe comes under the EU’s privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Since December 2024, Grok has been available to all X users, and has been able to churn out biographies of people who have an account on the social media platform X, also owned by Musk’s xAI.
It is as yet unclear whether the personal data of X users in the EU were processed lawfully and whether the company followed mandatory transparency requirements set out in the GDPR.
The DPC inquiry will focus on whether the personal data was lawfully processed to train the Grok AI model.
In the summer of 2024, the DPC initiated, and then swiftly concluded, an investigation into X for the alleged unlawful processing of its users’ data to train its AI model, Grok.
As a result, X committed to permanently refrain from processing EU users’ data for training Grok and deleted all previously processed data used for this purpose.
In August 2024, consumer organisations Euroconsumers, Altroconsumo, and the European Center for Digital Rights (Noyb) alleged that X had committed multiple violations of the GDPR and filed complaints to the Irish DPC.
Under the GDPR, X Internet Unlimited Company, the new name of Twitter International Unlimited Company as of 1 April, which is the data controller for EU users of X and is based in Dublin, could be fined up to 4% of its annual global turnover.
(jp/aw)
