Hibapress
The Noyb association announced on Monday that it had filed nine complaints against the social network X (formerly Twitter), which allegedly began to “illegally” use personal data of more than 60 million users in Europe to train its artificial intelligence technologies.
In May 2024, X began irreversibly integrating European users’ data into its “Grok” AI technology, without ever informing them or asking for their consent, says the Viennese NGO, which is behind several complaints against web giants, including Meta recently.
Noyb, which says it acknowledges the agreement recently reached between X and the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) to suspend the training of the algorithm with EU data until September, is nevertheless calling for a full investigation to be opened.
“What happened, for example, to the European data already integrated into the systems and how can Twitter (correctly) separate European data from non-European data (where people do not benefit from the protection of the EU General Data Protection Regulation – GDPR)?” asks the association, which has filed complaints in Austria, Belgium, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain.
The same applies, she continues, to sensitive data referred to in Article 9 of the GDPR, such as data revealing ethnicity, political opinions and religious beliefs, as well as other data.
With the introduction of its AI technology, X appears to have breached a number of other provisions of the GDPR, including the transparency and operational principles and rules, Noyb believes.
According to her, the more other EU data protection authorities get involved in the procedure, the greater the pressure will be on X to actually comply with EU law.
