By Ryan Patrick Jones
TORONTO (Reuters) -Canada’s privacy watchdog has opened an investigation into X, the social media platform owned by billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk, on whether it followed privacy laws when artificial intelligence (AI) models were trained.
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada said in a statement on Thursday it launched the probe after receiving a complaint.
“The investigation will focus on the platform’s compliance with federal privacy law with respect to its collection, use, and disclosure of Canadians’ personal information to train artificial intelligence models,” the statement said.
The office did not provide any additional details about the nature of the complaint.
Musk, CEO of electric vehicles maker Tesla, is also the founder of artificial intelligence startup xAI.
Following Musk’s 2022 purchase of Twitter and its subsequent renaming as X, the social media platform made xAI’s Grok chatbot available to its users.
Grok is an AI assistant that helps users complete tasks, including answering questions, solving problems and brainstorming, X says on its website.
Last week, xAI introduced Grok-3, the latest iteration of its chatbot, which is being rolled out immediately to Premium+ subscribers on X.
Generative AI models such as Grok require lots of data to train and develop.
Canada’s privacy legislation set out rules for how private-sector organizations can collect, use, and disclose personal information in the course of business, the privacy commissioner has said on its website. They include rules around consent, disclosure, retention and safeguards.
(Reporting by Ryan Patrick Jones; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
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