According to the Irish Data Protection Authority, X is illegally collecting data from European users to train its AI model Grok.

The Irish Data Protection Commission is taking legal action against Twitter International Unlimited Company, the official name of X’s Irish office. Elon Musk’s social media company is accused of unlawfully collecting the data of millions of European users to train its AI models.

Like any self-respecting tech company, X has its own LLM called Grok, available to paying users in the form of a chatbot. X wants to launch a new version of Grok this year and needs data to do so. The company believes it has a unique source of data: the posts users share on the platform.

Violation of the GDPR

Under European law, X is not allowed to simply feed these contributions into its AI model without the explicit consent of users or another valid legal basis. X added an opt-in menu in the user settings in late July. The company believed it had fulfilled its obligation, but this was not included in the Irish DPC.

The authority found that X enables opt-in automatically. Users who do not want to share their posts with Grok must opt ​​out manually. X violates GDPR legislation because it imposes the responsibility not to share data with users, is the opinion of DPC. X would not have listened to a request to change this either.

Because X doesn’t want to listen, it now has to feel. If the DPC is right, X risks a fine of up to four percent of its annual turnover. The data protection officer also wants to block the introduction of the new Grok model in court.

In Europe, Meta also previously encountered the GDPR limit (several times). The company wanted to collect user data to train its Llama models and made users who did not want to go through a complex opt-out process. This was met with a lot of criticism, after which Meta decided to pause its AI activities in Europe.

Personal vendetta

CEO Elon Musk is busy pursuing his own personal vendetta against anyone and everything that isn’t on his side. He plans to file a lawsuit on behalf of X against advertisers who boycott the social media platform. But Musk also has a lot to do with his former partners at OpenAI and wants to put current CEO Sam Altman in the legal spotlight.