Google's artificial intelligence model PaLM2 is under review by EU privacy regulators

On September 12, 2024, news from London. EU regulators announced on Thursday that they are investigating Google's artificial intelligence model, mainly due to concerns about whether it complies with the EU's strict data privacy regulations.

The Irish Data Protection Commission said it has launched an investigation into Google's Pathways Language Model 2 (PaLM2). This action is part of a broader effort involving other regulators in the 27 EU countries to examine how artificial intelligence systems handle personal data. Since Google's European headquarters is located in Dublin, the Irish regulator has become the main regulator for Google regarding the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The commission said the investigation will examine whether Google has evaluated whether data processing by PaLM2 may pose a high risk to the "rights and freedoms of individuals" in the EU. Large language models like PaLM2 are huge treasure troves of data and building blocks for artificial intelligence systems. Google uses PaLM2 to power a range of generative artificial intelligence services, such as email summaries. Currently, Google has not responded to requests for comment.

The Irish regulator said earlier this month that Elon Musk's social media platform X has agreed to permanently stop processing user data for its artificial intelligence chatbot Grok. This is the decision made by the X platform after the regulator took it to court last month. At that time, the regulator filed an emergency application with the High Court, asking X to "suspend, limit or prohibit" processing personal data contained in its users' public posts. In addition, apparently under pressure from the Irish regulator, Meta has also suspended its plan to use content posted by European users to train its latest version of a large language model. Last year, Italy's data privacy regulator temporarily banned ChatGPT due to data privacy violations and required its manufacturer, OpenAI, to meet a series of requirements to address concerns.