ReportWire

Tag: Digital rights management

  • Grok faces more scrutiny over deepfakes

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    LONDON — Elon Musk’s social media platform X faces a European Union privacy investigation after its Grok AI chatbot started spitting out nonconsensual deepfake images, Ireland’s data privacy regulator said Tuesday.

    Ireland’s Data Protection Commission said it notified X on Monday that it was opening the inquiry under the 27-nation EU’s strict data privacy regulations, adding to the scrutiny X is facing in Europe and other parts of the world over Grok’s behavior.

    Grok sparked a global backlash last month after it started granting requests from X users to undress people with its AI image generation and editing capabilities, including putting females in transparent bikinis or revealing clothing. Researchers said some images appeared to include children. The company later introduced some restrictions on Grok, though authorities in Europe weren’t satisfied.

    The Irish watchdog said its investigation focuses on the apparent creation and posting on X of “potentially harmful” nonconsensual intimate or sexualized images containing or involving personal data from Europeans, including children.

    X did not respond to a request for comment.

    Grok was built by Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI and is available through X, where its responses to user requests are publicly visible for others to see.

    The watchdog said the investigation will seek to determine whether X complied with the EU data privacy rules known as GDPR, or General Data Protection Regulation. Under the rules, the Irish regulator takes the lead on enforcing the bloc’s privacy rules because X’s European headquarters is based in Dublin. Violations can result in hefty fines.

    The regulator “has been engaging” with X since media reports started circulating weeks earlier about “the alleged ability of X users to prompt the @Grok account on X to generate sexualized images of real people, including children,” Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle said in a press statement.

    Earlier this month, French prosecutors raided X’s Paris offices and summoned billionaire owner Elon Musk for questioning. Meanwhile, the data privacy and media regulators in Britain, which has left the EU, have opened their own investigations into X.

    The platform is already facing a separate EU investigation from Brussels over whether it has been complying with the bloc’s digital rulebook for protecting social media users that requires platforms to curb the spread of illegal content such as child sexual abuse material.

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  • LinkedIn hit with 310 million euro fine for data privacy violations from Irish watchdog

    LinkedIn hit with 310 million euro fine for data privacy violations from Irish watchdog

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    LONDON (AP) — European Union regulators slapped LinkedIn on Thursday with a 310 million euro ($335 million) fine for violations of the bloc’s stringent data privacy rules.

    Ireland’s Data Protection Commission reprimanded the Microsoft-owned professional social networking site over concerns about the “lawfulness, fairness and transparency” of its personal data processing for advertising purposes.

    The Dublin-based watchdog is LinkedIn’s lead privacy regulator in the 27-nation EU because that’s where the company’s European headquarters is based.

    The watchdog said it carried out an investigation that found LinkedIn did not have a lawful basis to gather data so it could target users with online ads, which is a breach of the privacy rules known as General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. It ordered LinkedIn to comply with the rules.

    Processing personal data “without an appropriate legal basis is a clear and serious violation” of the right to data protection in the EU, Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle said in a statement.

    LinkedIn said it that while it believes it has been “in compliance” with the rules, it’s working to ensure its “ad practices” meet the requirements.

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  • Austrian activist Schrems wins privacy case against Meta over personal data on sexual orientation

    Austrian activist Schrems wins privacy case against Meta over personal data on sexual orientation

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    LONDON — The European Union’s top court said Friday that social media company Meta can’t use public information about a user’s sexual orientation obtained outside its platforms for personalized advertising under the bloc’s strict data privacy rules.

    The decision from the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg is a victory for Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems, who has been a thorn in the side of Big Tech companies over their compliance with 27-nation bloc’s data privacy rules.

    The EU court issued its ruling after Austria’s supreme court asked for guidance in Schrems’ case on how to apply the privacy rules, known as the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR.

    Schrems had complained that Facebook had processed personal data including information about his sexual orientation to target him with online advertising, even though he had never disclosed on his account that he was gay. The only time he had publicly revealed this fact was during a panel discussion.

    “An online social network such as Facebook cannot use all of the personal data obtained for the purposes of targeted advertising, without restriction as to time and without distinction as to type of data,” the court said in a press release summarizing its decision.

    Even though Schrems revealed he was gay in the panel discussion, that “does not authorise the operator of an online social network platform to process other data relating to his sexual orientation, obtained, as the case may be, outside that platform, with a view to aggregating and analysing those data, in order to offer him personalised advertising.”

    Meta said it was awaiting publication of the court’s full judgment and that it “takes privacy very seriously.”

    “Everyone using Facebook has access to a wide range of settings and tools that allow people to manage how we use their information,” the company said in a statement.

    Schrems’ lawyer, Katharina Raabe-Stuppnig, lawyer representing Mr Schrems, welcomed the court’s decision.

    “Meta has basically been building a huge data pool on users for 20 years now, and it is growing every day. However, EU law requires ‘data minimisation’,” she said in a statement. “Following this ruling only a small part of Meta’s data pool will be allowed to be used for advertising — even when users consent to ads.”

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