The Irish Data Protection Commission is investigating Elon Musk’s social media platform X. This occurred due to claims that users’ data might have been used to train Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, via modifications in the platform’s default settings.
On the default setting of social media platforms, many Twitter accounts have commented that this enables the data of customers “to train Grok.”
On July 25, the DPC informed TechCrunch:
The Irish Data Protection Commission has been interrogating X on the existing matter for a couple of months, and the recent meeting was yesterday to fetch the outcomes.
The Commission stated:
“Therefore we are surprised by today’s developments. We have followed up with X today and are awaiting a response. We expect further engagement early next week.”
Grok, an AI chatbot, aims to be funny, helpful, and interesting. The research firm of Elon Musk known as xAI has developed this.
Experts urge X users to disable new privacy setting
Numerous posts alerted users of X about the modification in the settings that permits this platform to train and increase the AI using their posts, talks, and interactions with Grok.
The encrypted email service provider ProtonMail informed its 304,500 X followers how to turn off the default setting.
On July 26, Proton discussed in an X post:
“Your data on X is used by default to train Grok. Turn it off in Settings > Privacy and safety > Data sharing and personalization > Grok.”
This news comes after Musk declared that xAI would publish Grok as an open source. At the same time, legal action against OpenAI, a rival in AI chatbot growth and development continues to gain steam.
Users praised Grok’s open source announcement
Musk made no proper announcement to make Grok open source till the time, however, the response to this post remains positive, and people are praising the decision made by him.
On Feb 29, Musk took legal action against OpenAI alleging that the party breached the agreement made at the time OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit organization.
He further stated that shaking hands with Microsoft goes against the agreement of nonprofit organizations to advance artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity.
