X faces controversy over using user data for training AI chatbot Grok: Report

Elon Musk's social media platform X is reportedly under scrutiny by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) after widespread reports emerged that a change in default settings allowed users' X data to be fed into the training of Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok.

“The DPC has been engaging with X on this matter for a number of months, with our latest interaction occurring as recently as yesterday,” the DPC told TechCrunch on July 25.

“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,” the Commission commented.

Grok is an AI chatbot designed to be witty, informative and engaging. Grok’s development is spearheaded by xAI, a research and development company founded by Musk himself.

X users were warned to turn off the controversial setting

Several posts were made warning X users about the change, which allow the platform to use posts, interactions, inputs, and results with Grok to be "used for training and fine-tuning." .

Encrypted email service ProtonMail gave instructions to its 304,500 X followers about how to turn off the default setting.

“Your data on X is used by default to train Grok. Turn it off in Settings > Privacy and safety > Data sharing and personalization > Grok,” Proton explained in a July 26 X post.

It comes only months after Musk announced that xAI would make Grok open source as a lawsuit against rival AI chatbot developer OpenAI gathers pace.

Users responded positively to Grok's open source move

While Musk did not elaborate on his plans to make Grok open source at the time, the responses to his post were mostly positive, with users praising him for the decision. 

One user responded by saying, “OpenAI should do the same. If they are ‘open’ that is,” to which Musk replied, “OpenAI is a lie.”

Meanwhile, on Feb. 29, Cointelegraph reported that Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, claiming a breach of the agreement made when OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit organization. 

He argued that OpenAI’s partnership with Microsoft goes against the founding principles of the nonprofit agreement to advance open-source artificial general intelligence (AGI) for the benefit of humanity.