Internet Musk gives chatbot access to user contributions on X
The Facebook group Meta recently refrained from using user contributions for AI training in Europe after pressure from data protectionists. The Twitter successor X is now doing just that.
27.07.2024, 10:33
27.07.2024, 10:34
SDA
Elon Musk's online platform X has its chatbot Grok trained with posts from users as standard. As they were not explicitly asked for permission to do this, the move has prompted European data protectionists to take action.
Users noticed the change in the privacy settings on Friday. The option to allow Grok to use public X posts in addition to direct interactions with the chatbot was already automatically checked for everyone.
The setting can only be changed in the web version of X (formerly Twitter); it is currently not displayed at all in the smartphone app. X has announced that this will change soon.
Data protection authority has questions
The Irish data protection authority responsible for X in Europe now has questions for the service. It has been in talks with the platform for months about the use of user data in AI systems, the authority told the Financial Times. "We were surprised that they introduced this."
X's approach raises the question of whether the service complied with the requirements of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), according to which user consent must first be obtained for the use of personalized data. They should also be informed of the reasons for this.
Meta postponed plans - X implements them
In June, the Facebook group Meta postponed its plans to use public posts from users in Europe to train its AI models indefinitely following pressure from Irish data protection authorities. Previously, it had been criticized that Meta did not provide for explicit user consent, but only the option to object to the use of the data. X is now proceeding as Meta intended.
Grok is intended to compete with other AI chatbots such as the pioneer ChatGPT from OpenAI or Claude from Anthropic. The software is not being developed directly by X, but by the company xAI, which is also owned by Musk. He bought Twitter in the fall of 2022 for around 44 billion dollars and renamed the service X.
