Data Protection Commissioner warned firms over use of AI prior to X court hearing 

Dublin-based Twitter International is the data controller in the EU/EEA in respect of all personal data carried out on X, formerly Twitter.

The Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) warned companies over their use of artificial intelligence (AI) with personal data last month, prior to taking social media giant X to court earlier this week.

In a notice on its website, the DPC said that publicly accessible personal data falls within the scope of the EU’s GDPR legislation and that companies need to consider the privacy risks of using such data in their AI products and the need to be transparent with consumers.

“[You should] consider the purpose and goals of your processing and if there are other non-AI technologies or means to reaching them,” the DPC said. “These alternatives may be less risky or more appropriate for you.” 

On Tuesday, the DPC took X to the High Court over concerns about the use of personal data of millions of European users of the platform formerly known as Twitter to train artificial intelligence systems including its enhanced search tool known as 'Grok'.

Grok, which is available to X Premium customers, is billed as a humorous enhanced search feature powered by a "state-of-the-art large language model" that was initially trained on publicly available sources.

The company now wants to use user interactions and posts to improve the service. X users are opted in to the new system by default but can choose to opt out in settings on the web-based app.

When enabled, the setting allows posts on the site as well as interactions with the chatbot to be used for "training", while the data may also be shared with the X AI partner company.

Prior to taking the High Court proceedings, the DPC said it was "surprised" over X’s decision to use user posts to train the AI chatbot.

In the High Court case, the DPC is arguing that X is not complying with its GDPR obligations through its use of Grok. X denies any wrongdoing.

It’s expected that the case will come before the High Court again on Thursday.