Elon Musk’s ‘X’ being investigated by Irish data watchdog over use of EU personal data to train Grok AI

Data Protection Commission investigating if personal data used to train AI system was processed lawfully

Elon Musk bought X, formerly Twitter, in 2022. Photo: Reuters

Ireland’s data watchdog has started a probe into how Elon Musk’s social media platform X, formerly Twitter, processes personal data gleaned from across the EU in order to train its Grok artificial intelligence chatbot.

The Data Protection Commission (DPC) said it’s specifically examining how the personal data in relation to publicly-accessible posts on the platform is processed “for the purposes of training generative artificial intelligence modes, in particular the Grok Large Language Models (LLMs)”.

“The inquiry will examine compliance with a range of key provisions of the GDPR, including with regard to the lawfulness and transparency of the processing,” according to the watchdog.

The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) sets out strict rules for the processing of personal data by controllers…