Without consent

User data collected for AI: Complaint against X

Data protection activists in nine EU countries, including Austria, have lodged a complaint against X (formerly Twitter). Elon Musk's short message service uses customers' personal data to train its AI without their consent, the noyb group led by Austrian activist Max Schrems announced on Monday.

Under pressure from the Irish data protection authority DPC, the company agreed not to use some of the data already collected for AI training. However, the DPC's complaint is apparently focused on formalities and does not question the legality of the data use itself.

"We want to ensure that Twitter fully complies with EU law, which requires - as a bare minimum - asking users for their consent," said noyb chairman Schrems. At a hearing on Thursday, an Irish court found that X had only given its users the opportunity to object several weeks after the start of data collection.

In June, Facebook parent company Meta announced that it would not be launching its AI assistant in Europe for the time being. Here, too, noyb had lodged complaints in several countries against the use of personal data to train the software.