Social Media Platform X Under Investigation By Irish Data Protection Commission
According to Cointelegraph: Elon Musk's social media platform X is under scrutiny by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) following reports that a change in default settings allows user data to be fed into the training of Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok.“The DPC has been engaging with X on this matter for several months, with our latest interaction occurring as recently as yesterday,” the DPC told TechCrunch on July 25. The Commission expressed surprise at the recent developments and is awaiting a response from X, with further engagement expected early next week.Grok and User Data ControversyGrok is an AI chatbot designed to be witty, informative, and engaging, developed by xAI, a research and development company founded by Musk. Several posts on X have warned users about the controversial setting change, which allows the platform to use posts, interactions, inputs, and results with Grok for training and fine-tuning purposes.Encrypted email service ProtonMail advised its 304,500 X followers on how to turn off the default setting: “Your data on X is used by default to train Grok. Turn it off in Settings > Privacy and safety > Data sharing and personalization > Grok,” Proton explained in a July 26 X post.Open Source Move and Legal BattlesThis controversy comes months after Musk announced that xAI would make Grok open source, amid a lawsuit against rival AI chatbot developer OpenAI. Musk's announcement received positive responses from users, with many praising the decision and calling for OpenAI to do the same.On February 29, Cointelegraph reported that Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, claiming a breach of the agreement made when OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit organization. Musk argued that OpenAI’s partnership with Microsoft contradicts the founding principles of the nonprofit agreement to advance open-source artificial general intelligence (AGI) for the benefit of humanity.