Ireland’s data protection authority has launched an investigation into Elon Musk’s social media platform X, focusing on how it uses personal data from European users to train its AI chatbot, Grok.
The Data Protection Commission announced Friday that it’s examining whether X legally processed publicly available user posts from European residents to help develop the Grok large language models (LLMs).
“The goal of this inquiry is to assess if the personal data was lawfully used for training Grok’s LLMs in line with EU data protection rules,” the commission said in an online statement.
Large language models are trained on massive datasets, including online content such as blogs, articles, and essays, to develop the capabilities of generative AI systems.
Since X’s European headquarters is located in Dublin, the Irish commission serves as the lead regulator under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR gives regulators the authority to issue fines of up to €20 million or 4% of a company’s global annual revenue for serious breaches.
X has not responded to a request for comment.