Elon Musk's X accused of AI data grab in ‘blatant breach of law’

Privacy organisation Open Rights Group has branded a move by social network X (formerly Twitter) to use user data to train its Grok AI as a "blatant breach of GDPR".

The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is an EU law protecting people’s data, and is implemented in the UK as part of the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 2018).

The new X setting is on by default for most users, and allows the network to gather information to train Grok. It was introduced by the company with little public fanfare and was only widely noticed by users last Friday. Yahoo News has asked Twitter when users' settings were changed.

Grok is a chatbot similar to ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, but accessible via X and only open to subscribers.

Open Rights Group’s legal and policy officer Mariano delli Santi told Yahoo News:“This looks like a blatant breach of GDPR and the ICO (Information Commissioner's Office) must take urgent action to protect our data rights.

“Social media companies must be stopped from using our personal data for developing AI without asking for our consent. There needs to be full transparency about how our data will be used and we should have the option to opt in to such schemes.

“Social media companies clearly think they’re above the law, and our data is fair game. We need the ICO to step up before it’s too late.”

The ICO is an independent public body in the UK that protects data privacy.

What can be done?

Open Rights Group previously complained about a similar change brought in by Meta (owner of Facebook and Instagram), and the social media giant appears to have paused the rollout.

Meta emailed Facebook and Instagram users in May to warn of a change, aiming to use user data to develop AI.

Meta announced plans to pause these changes on 14 June.

The ICO posted that Meta “responded to our request to pause and review plans to use Facebook and Instagram user data to train generative AI”.

Open Rights Group said, “There has been no official change to the Meta privacy policy that would make this stop to data processing for the development of Meta’s “AI technologies” legally binding.

“Therefore, ORG staff have raised a formal regulatory complaint in the UK. With this, they want to ensure that Meta’s proposals are shelved , and that the ICO protects the rights of UK residents to the same standard that other DPAs afford in the European Union”

Is there a way to stop your data being used?

While Twitter puts the slider ‘On’ by default, it is relatively easy to change.

You can’t change this setting in the mobile app, but you can withdraw consent to your data being used in the desktop version of X (Twitter) on Mac or PC.

To do so, just go to your profile, then Settings > Privacy and Safety > Data Sharing and Personalization.

Select Grok, and then switch the slider to ‘Off.’

Yahoo News has reached out to X for comment.