Alphabet Inc.-owned GOOG GOOGL Google’s artificial intelligence model, PaLM2, has come under the radar of Europe’s privacy watchdog over concerns related to the handling of personal data.
What Happened: The Data Protection Commission or DPC, in Ireland has initiated a statutory inquiry into Google and its Pathways Language Model 2, or PaLM2, reported Financial Times.
The AI model, which was launched in May 2023, is being investigated for potential breaches of the General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR obligations related to the processing of personal data of EU and European Economic Area citizens.
The investigation aims to ascertain whether Google conducted a necessary data protection impact assessment before handling such information.
The regulator underscored the significance of such assessments in safeguarding the fundamental rights and freedoms of individuals, the report noted.
Google did not immediately respond to Benzinga’s request for comments.
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Why It Matters: This investigation is the latest in a series of actions by the DPC against big tech firms developing large language models.
Previously, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Platforms Inc. and Elon Musk’s xAI also faced scrutiny over their handling of user data in Europe.
This Google investigation comes on the heels of a series of controversies surrounding the tech giant’s AI. In April 2024, concerns about Google training its AI on publicly available Google Docs were raised. The tech giant later said that users’ documents were not considered "publicly available" for AI training.
Previously, several top websites, including The New York Times and CNN, blocked Google’s access to their content for AI model training, citing potential threats to the traditional web traffic distribution system.
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