It’s happening again—after EU privacy authorities brought the European rollout of Meta AI to a screeching halt and forced X to stop training its Grok chatbot on European users’ data, they’re now also investigating Google over its AI practices.
The Irish Data Protection Commission (the lead EU privacy regulator for most Big Tech firms, due to its establishment in the country) said today that it was formally probing Google’s behavior around its PaLM 2 large language model—the predecessor to the Gemini LLMs that are now powering Google’s AI offerings.
Specifically, the DPC wants to check if Google conducted a data protection impact assessment before deploying PaLM 2 last year. These assessments are demanded by EU privacy law and, in the DPC’s words, are “of crucial importance in ensuring that the fundamental rights and freedoms of individuals are adequately considered and protected when processing of personal data is likely to result in a high risk.”
This is, on the face of it, a relatively beige action by the Irish watchdog—it involves an AI model that’s already out of date, and it’s not clear what (if anything) Google might have to stop doing.
Meta was ordered to stop training Meta AI on the personal data of Facebook and Instagram users without their consent, so it pressed pause on the entire venture in the EU and U.K., claiming that not being able to use European data for training made it pointless to roll out AI in that region. Elon Musk’s X also had to stop feeding European user data into its AI, though it continues to provide Grok there.
Nonetheless, the same law—the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation—is at play in all these cases. This makes sense, as there’s no AI without data, and the GDPR was always designed to be technologically neutral. If personal data is involved, then the GDPR applies. Violations of the law can in theory lead to fines of up to 4% of global annual revenues.
“We take seriously our obligations under the GDPR and will work constructively with the DPC to answer their questions,” said a Google spokesperson.
Considering Meta, X, and Google’s GDPR issues—plus the antitrust concerns that have prompted Apple to delay the EU rollout of Apple Intelligence—it’s by now very clear that European regulation is already an active concern for the AI sector.
And it’s still going to be a couple years before the EU’s actual AI Act will fully come into force, bringing in a host of non-privacy-related rules, so buckle up!
* * *
On a separate note, this is last of my essays for Data Sheet, which will adopt an exciting new format as of Monday. (My colleague Allie Garfinkle will be penning the final Data Sheet essay tomorrow.)
The new Data Sheet will be more bite-sized, summarizing a range of the day’s most important tech stories to help you quickly understand their importance. Our aim is to make Data Sheet the only tech newsletter you’ll need to read in the morning, and we hope you’ll enjoy it!
As for me, I’ll still be around, spending a lot more time delving into the subject of AI along with our existing experts on the subject, Jeremy Kahn and Sharon Goldman. And don’t worry: If you share my longstanding interest in issues around tech regulation, I’ll still be covering the most important developments in my Fortune writing.
More news below.
David Meyer
Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Data Sheet? Drop a line here.
NEWSWORTHY
Private spacewalk. The astronauts on SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission undertook the first-ever private spacewalk this morning, for one hour and 46 minutes. Two SpaceX engineers are on the mission, as is a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, but it’s funded and commanded by entrepreneur Jared Isaacman. Space.com has a great report on the milestone. Meanwhile, Al Jazeera has an interesting article on why the U.S. has broken the Cold War-era Outer Space Treaty by not supervising or even regulating this private mission.
Neumann’s crypto fail. If you’ve been looking forward to the launch of Adam Neumann’s “Goddess Nature Token,” then I’m sorry to tell you it isn’t coming. The WeWork co-founder’s climate tech startup, Flowcarbon, announced the token in 2022. It was supposed to be backed by carbon credits, giving people a way to get into the carbon market. But, as Forbes reports, Flowcarbon has quietly started issuing refunds in recent weeks, with the company blaming “market conditions and resistance from carbon registries” for its failure to launch.
Google trial. Google’s ad-tech antitrust trial, which began Monday, has already thrown up some interesting quotes. Stephanie Layser, a former News Corp ad exec, said Google’s monopolization of both the buy and sell sides of the ad business made it feel “like they were holding us hostage.” And evidence from 2009, when Google’s ad business was taking off, shows the company’s then president of display advertising, David Rosenblatt, saying: “We’ll be able to crush the other networks and that’s our goal.”
SIGNIFICANT FIGURES
$150 billion
—The valuation at which OpenAI is negotiating a new funding round, according to Bloomberg. It was just two weeks ago that the Wall Street Journal was reporting a figure of “above $100 billion.”
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Inside the secretive design studio of Amazon’s robo-taxi company Zoox as it readies for paying customers, by Jessica Mathews
Kamala Harris attacks Donald Trump’s tech trade plan during the debate: ‘He basically sold us out’ to China, by Jenn Brice
Trump media shares nosedive after debate with Harris, by Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez
Free speech faces death by 1,000 cuts as tech, media, and politics clash, by Richard Torrenzano
Ex-Sony boss’ blunt advice for laid-off workers: ‘Go to the beach for a year or drive an Uber’, by Orianna Rosa Royle
BEFORE YOU GO
Well this is awkward. OpenWeb, a New York startup that provides AI-moderated comment functionality for big online publishers, told its workers earlier this week that chairman Tim Harvey would become CEO. As TechCrunch recounts, Harvey hailed the “incredible passion” of co-founder and CEO Nadav Shoval… who then told employees that he wasn’t going anywhere. Shoval said the board had “falsely stated that I am stepping out of my role as CEO” and had breached his contract. Harvey then told employees that “we are progressing with the CEO transition process as planned,” and Shoval was removed from OpenWeb’s “who we are” page.