This seems like a step back for Elon Musk’s expanding AI ambitions.
While Musk’s xAI project continues to build out its hardware stack, the project has also been forced to exclude EU user data from its data set, after a legal challenge over how the project is utilizing public X data to fuel its language models.
As has long been part of the xAI initiative, the project is using public posts from X to build its models. Those models now power Grok, X’s AI chatbot, and with X recently expanding its “Colossus” AI training system, it looks set to make even more use of this data, as it builds its AI offering.
But EU officials raised concerns about the consent requirements for such under its evolving data privacy laws. Under the GDPR, X is required to seek explicit permission from EU users over the use of their data for additional purpose.
X initially said that such usage was within its existing permissions, and that it would fight the legal challenge, while it also quietly added a new, explicit setting within user account options that gives X permission to use your posts and activity in the app to train its Grok AI chatbot.
But now, it seems that X has conceded that it will need to improve its approach to gaining consent for such. And as a result, it’s decided to exclude public posts from EU users entirely, while it works out next steps.
Which could be a major blow for the app, particularly around European news and updates, and Grok’s capacity to provide answers to related queries. The key selling point for X’s AI bot is that it can provide up-to-the-minute responses on the latest news, based on X chatter, while other AI chatbots are days, even months behind. But without EU input, that’s a lot of potential insight that Grok loses from its response base.
Maybe X has a way around this, and it’s no doubt also working on a new approach to gain EU user consent for model training. But right now, it means that Grok, and xAI’s broader offerings, lose a heap of insight, from around 100 million total users.
Though, then again, X has seen a steady decline in usage in the region.
Maybe, EU user insight is no longer as valuable as it once was in this respect, though 100 million users, or 20% of X’s user base, is a lot of info to be missing.
Presumably, X will come out with a renewed approach on this front shortly.
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