Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) is taking Elon Musk’s X to court, as reported by Irish broadcaster RTE, launching High Court proceedings against Twitter International for concerns regarding the use of European users’ public posts on X to train artificial intelligence tools. The commission is specifically worried about the data being used for the next version of Grok, set to be released soon. In July, X implemented a setting that allowed the platform to use public posts to train its AI chatbot further, surprising the commission despite previous communication with the company. Although X offered an opt-out mechanism for users since May, it was not enough for the DPC, as a large number of European users’ data was processed without proper protection. This violates the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by not offering a timely opt-out option for users. With no legal basis for processing user data, X’s Irish division, Twitter International, has refused to stop processing data or delay the Grok update launch as requested by the DPC. The commission now seeks court action to potentially prohibit the company from training AI systems with user data and impose fines of up to 4 percent of X’s annual worldwide turnover if GDPR rules were violated.
