Ireland watchdog has announced a probe into blogging platform X over its use of European public’s data to train its AI model Grok. Grok is a large language model developed by Elon Musk’s platform xAI, and acts as a chatbot on his X platform.
The probe into Musk’s platform is expected to put a strain on relationships considering he is a strong ally of United States President Donald Trump and the recent US and EU feud over data privacy laws and tech regulation.
Ireland regulatory watchdog investigates X
According to reports, the Data Protection Commission said it had opened an inquiry into “the processing of personal data comprised in publicly-accessible posts” that European users posted on X. In addition, the commission mentioned in a posted statement, as per the data privacy law of the bloc, that this inquiry will determine whether this personal data was processed legally to train the Grok Large Language Model.
Notably, the algorithms underpinning generative AI systems were trained using a large language model, a vast collection of text that included essays, blog posts, articles, and other content scraped from online sources. The Irish regulatory watchdog based in Dublin acts as the main regulator for X under the strict EU data privacy law.
If a company commits serious violations, the watchdog can fine them up to “20 million euros, or 4% of their total yearly revenue.” Meanwhile, xAI’s flagship model is available in two versions—Grok 3 and Grok 3 Mini—both equipped with advanced “reasoning” capabilities and accessible via API.