On Friday, X users found that their X posts and interactions with the Grok chabot were being used for “training and fine-tuning” xAI’s systems. It didn’t ask the users for explicit consent for data sharing, and people automatically opted in.
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, Europe’s watchdog, which manages EU privacy law compliance, said it has been in contact with X and is currently seeking clarity from X on the matter. On Thursday, they sent questions to the company regarding the transparency of users.
On Friday, a spokesperson from the watchdog said, “It took us by surprise that they were rolling this out.”
Privacy experts have expressed that if the Irish regulator opens a General Data Protection Regulation probe for data breaches, X will face fines and penalties.
Since Elon Musk bought X in 2022, it has been receiving scrutiny from regulators for cutting back its staff and moderation capabilities and bringing in sudden product changes. Due to that, the EU Commission is already investigating X for alleged transparency and moderation issues.
On Friday, X’s safety account replied, “All X users have the ability to control whether their public posts can be used to train Grok, the AI search assistant.”
The post further said, “This option is in addition to your existing controls over whether your interactions, inputs, and results related to Grok can be utilised. This setting is available on the web platform and will soon be rolled out on mobile.”
This move was made to gain the upper hand on rivals including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, whose advanced models are currently ahead of xAI. Thus, the company plans to use the massive repository of user data to train xAI.
Investors currently have conflicts over whether this project is worth the money or not due to transparency issues.
Currently, you can change this setting only on the X web version. For that, go to Privacy and Safety >> Uncheck Grok.
