Austrian non-profit privacy organization NOYB filed a complaint against the social media platform X, on Monday, alleging violations of user data privacy by the company, according to a statement.
Elon Musk’s corporation is alleged to be exploiting user data to train its artificial intelligence (AI) system, “Grok,” without the consent of users which violates the European Union’s privacy laws.
The group, led by privacy activist Max Schrems, submitted General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) complaints to authorities in nine EU member states including Austria, Belgium, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, and Poland .
The complaints are designed to intensify the scrutiny of Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), which serves as the EU’s primary regulator for a majority of U.S. tech companies whose European business operations are headquartered in Ireland.
The DPC is seeking a suspension or limitation of X’s processing of user data to develop, train, or refine the company’s AI systems.
In a hearing last week, an Irish court was informed that X has agreed to temporarily suspend the use of EU user data for AI training to allow consent to be withdrawn by users.
NOYB, however, raised concerns about the mitigation measures and lack of cooperation from X. The advocacy group also noted that the DPC’s complaint does not address the legality of the data processing itself.
Schrems reiterated the need for compliance with EU law, emphasizing that, at a minimum, users’ consent should be required in such cases. “We have seen countless instances of inefficient and partial enforcement by the DPC in the past years. We want to ensure that Twitter fully complies with EU law, which – at a bare minimum – requires to ask users for consent in this case.”
Another company facing challenges related to user data privacy in Ireland and the EU is Meta. The parent company of Facebook announced in June that it would delay launching its AI assistant in Europe following input from the DPC to postpone its plans.
NOYB is also pursuing legal action in several countries against the use of personal data for AI training in Facebook’s case.