European Union (EU) regulators said today (September 12) they are reviewing one of Google's artificial intelligence (AI) models over concerns about compliance with the bloc's strict data privacy rules.
It is understood that Ireland's Data Protection Committee has opened an investigation into Google's Pathways 2 (PaLM2) language model.
This is seen as part of a broader effort by the bloc to scrutinise how AI systems handle personal data, involving watchdogs from across the 27 EU member states.
Accordingly, Google's European headquarters is located in Dublin. Therefore, the Irish supervisory authority will act as the main regulator monitoring Google's compliance with the bloc's privacy rules, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The Committee also said its investigation is looking into whether Google has assessed PaLM2's data processing activities as likely to pose a "high risk to the rights and freedoms of individuals" in the EU.
In fact, large language models like PaLM2 are huge data stores that serve as building blocks for AI systems. Google has used PaLM2 to power a range of generative AI services like email content summarization.
The Irish watchdog also said that in early September, billionaire Elon Musk's social media platform X agreed to permanently stop processing user data for an AI chatbot called Grok.
The platform only made that move after the watchdog filed an urgent application with Europe's top court to order X to "suspend, restrict or prohibit" the processing of personal data contained in users' public posts.
Meta Platforms, Facebook's parent company, has also halted plans to use content posted by European users to train its latest version of a large language model, after coming under pressure from Irish regulators.
Earlier in 2023, Italy's data privacy regulator temporarily banned OpenAI's ChatGPT app for violating users' data privacy rights. The country asked OpenAI to take action to address concerns about the issue.
