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Twitter’s AI Ambitions Face GDPR Backlash: Nine New Complaints Filed
Tuesday, August 13, 2024
Twitter, recently rebranded as “X,” is under increased scrutiny after nine additional complaints were filed across Europe, alleging the company unlawfully used the personal data of over 60 million EU/EEA users to train its AI technologies without their consent. This comes shortly after the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) initiated legal proceedings to halt the illegal data processing but has been criticized for not fully enforcing the GDPR.
Dangerous and Illicit practices
Dr Ilia Kolochenko, CEO at ImmuniWeb and Adjunct Professor of Cybersecurity at Capital Technology University, said tech giants are trying to leverage the full power of modern GenAI amid the fierce competition on the global market. “Sadly, many of them believe that user data is their property and they are entitled to use it without asking or sometimes even adequately informing the users.”
He adds that data on social networks – including public posts and comments – frequently contain sensitive personal data like religious beliefs, political opinions or health conditions. “When exploited for LLM training without due precautions and, most importantly, without following the appropriate procedure to obtain user consent, such practices are both technically dangerous and illicit in many countries. They are at odds not only with GDPR but may also infringe national laws on unfair competition, consumer protection or antitrust.”
Noyb is undertaking crucial and socially important actions to curb the uncontrolled misuse of user data for AI training purposes. Kolochenko believes that similar complaints will soon be filed in other jurisdictions with strong data protection laws, including some countries in Latin America and APAC region.
“Reportedly, in response to complaints lodged by Noyb in June, Facebook has recently paused its ambitious plans to train its proprietary LLMs on data of European users. Moreover, Facebook will likely have to make similar pull-back decisions in other jurisdictions,” he adds. X will probably follow the same avenue to avoid heft monetary fines or even suspension of its service in Europe. Moreover, new European legislation – including the EU AI Act and Digital Services Act (DSA) – raised the compliance bar even higher for AI systems, interrelated technologies, and platforms, forcing tech giants to continually improve their transparency, enhance the security of their AI ecosystems, and ensure the legality of data processing,” Kolochenko ends. Read Full Article
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