A Vienna-based privacy group on Monday filed complaints in eight European countries, alleging that Elon Musk's X “illegally” inputs users' personal data into its artificial intelligence technology without their consent.
The complaint, filed by the European Digital Rights Centre (aka Noyb, not your business), comes after the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) sued Company X earlier this month over its data collection practices for training its AI.
According to Noyb, X recently began “irreversibly feeding” the personal data of more than 60 million European users into its Grok AI technology “without notifying users or seeking their consent.”
Noyb charged that X “never proactively informed” users that their data was being used to train its AI, and said many people appeared to “learn about the new default settings through a viral post published on July 26.”
The DPC, acting on behalf of the European Union, announced last week that Company X had agreed to stop its much-criticised practice of processing users' personal data for its AI technology.
But Noyb founder Max Schrems said in a statement that the DPC had failed to “question the lawfulness” of the actual processing and appeared to have taken measures “peripheral, rather than at the heart of the issue.”
Neub also warned that it was unclear what happened to the EU data that had already been imported.
Neub called for a “thorough investigation” and has filed complaints in Austria, Belgium, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain.
The group has asked for “urgent procedures” against X to allow data protection authorities in eight European countries to act.
“I want to ensure that Twitter (now X) is fully compliant with EU law, which requires us, at a minimum, to ask for consent from users,” Schrems said, referring to the EU's landmark General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The GDPR aims to give people more control over how businesses use their personal information.
The group recently took similar legal action against social media giant Meta, forcing the company to halt its AI plans.
Noyb has filed multiple lawsuits against tech giants, often prompting regulatory action.
The group began its activities in 2018 with the advent of GDPR.
