In a significant legal development, Elon Musk’s social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) has agreed to temporarily cease using the posts of European users to train its AI tool, Grok. This decision follows intense scrutiny and legal action from Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), which oversees privacy regulations for the European Union under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The DPC announced this resolution in a press release, applauding X’s agreement to halt the processing of personal data from EU and European Economic Area (EEA) users, collected between May 7, 2024, and August 1, 2024. This suspension comes in response to an urgent High Court application initiated by the DPC under Section 134 of the Data Protection Act, 2018. The court emphasized that the rights and freedoms of European users were central to this legal intervention.
Earlier this week, it was revealed that the DPC had initiated court proceedings to obtain an injunction against X to prevent the platform from using EU citizens’ data without their explicit consent. The case is also being referred to the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) for further examination, raising broader questions about the legality and ethics of using publicly available data for AI training.
Des Hogan, the DPC commissioner, expressed his approval of X’s decision to pause the data processing, stating, “Today’s developments will help us to continue protecting the rights and freedoms of X users across the EU and EEA. We will continue to engage with all data controllers to ensure the rights of our citizens under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the GDPR are upheld.”
Despite the temporary pause, questions remain about the future of Grok and other AI models trained on European data. The legality of retaining and using models trained on data processed without consent is a grey area that privacy watchdogs across the EU are still navigating. The DPC’s investigation into whether X’s practices comply with GDPR is ongoing, and the matter will return to court in September for further deliberation.
In response to the legal challenge, X issued a statement via its Global Government Affairs account, asserting that the platform offers users in the EU control over their data through a simple privacy setting. X also claimed that the DPC’s legal actions were “unwarranted” and “overbroad,” and suggested that it was being unfairly singled out despite widespread data scraping practices by other companies.
The DPC has confirmed that the agreement to suspend data processing was made in the Irish High Court, although specific details of the undertaking remain undisclosed. The High Court’s media relations office indicated that the agreement was likely made verbally during court proceedings, and no formal documentation has been filed yet.
As the debate over the use of personal data for AI training intensifies, this case could set a critical precedent for how privacy rights are balanced against the development of artificial intelligence technologies in Europe.
