X is currently embroiled in a scandal over its Grok AI training, as nine privacy complaints against the business have been made in the European Union, alleging that it exploited user data without consent.
According to reports, the Elon Musk-owned company under the social media network was extracting user data from the platform without permission, based on regional users.
According to the European Centre for Digital Rights, which goes by the acronym NOYB, or “None of your business,” alleged that X changed the policy “unlawfully” in order to gather the personal information of more than 60 million X users in the EU.
Late last month, a keen-eyed social media user discovered a setting indicating that X had discreetly begun using regional users’ post data to train its Grok AI chatbot.
It was discovered that X had not requested users’ agreement in any way for the usage of their data for Grok’s advancement.
It directs users to X’s Grok AI setting, which they can choose to disable. However, it was activated by default, so users without advanced knowledge might not be able to find and disable it.
The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), which oversees X’s compliance with the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), expressed “surprise” at the news.
“Twitter (X) is the next US company to just suck up EU users’ data to train AI,” NOYB said in a statement.
“Twitter started irreversibly feeding European users’ data into its “Grok” AI technology in May 2024, without ever informing them or asking for their consent,” it said.
All uses of personal data must have a legitimate legal basis according to the GDPR, which has the authority to charge confirmed violators up to 4% of global annual revenue.
The complaints have been made with data protection authorities in Austria, Belgium, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Spain.
We earlier reported that Elon Musk has reopened a lawsuit against Sam Altman in federal court, claiming that the CEO of Tesla was tricked into co-founding OpenAI.
