European Union tightens siege on Google with investigation and billion-dollar fine

European Union regulators are investigating one of Google’s artificial intelligence models over concerns about its compliance with the bloc’s strict data privacy laws.

Ireland’s Data Protection Commission has opened an investigation into Pathways Language Model 2, or PaLM2, as part of a broader effort involving other national watchdogs across the EU to look into how AI systems handle personal data.

As Google’s European headquarters are in Dublin, the Irish authority acts as the company’s main regulator when it comes to the European Union’s privacy rules, known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The commission wants to know whether Google assessed the potential “risks to EU citizens’ rights and freedoms” when processing data with PaLM2. The company uses the model to power a range of generative AI services, such as its email summarization function.

In response, Google said it would cooperate with the investigation. “We take our obligations under the GDPR very seriously and are ready to work with the Data Protection Commission to answer all questions,” the company said in a statement.

The Irish authority recently reported that Elon Musk’s Twitter (now X) has agreed to stop processing data from users in the bloc for its AI chatbot, Grok.

This only happened after the body filed a request with the Supreme Court, asking the platform to “suspend, restrict or prohibit” the processing of personal data contained in public posts.

Meta also suspended its plans to use content posted by European users to train the new version of its language model, following pressure from Irish regulators.

Last year, Italy temporarily banned ChatGPT over data privacy violations, demanding that OpenAI, the chatbot’s developer, meet a series of requirements to address these issues.

BILLION DOLLAR FINES

Times are tough for Google in Europe. Earlier this month, the company lost its final appeal against a fine imposed by the European Union over practices that illegally favored its price comparison service in searches over competitors.

The bloc’s Court of Justice upheld a lower court ruling rejecting the company’s appeal against a penalty imposed by the European Commission in 2017. The decision ended a long antitrust case and resulted in a fine of €2.4 billion (around R$15 billion).

The Commission fined Google for directing visitors to its own price comparison service, undermining competitors. It was just one of three cases in which the EU has slapped the search giant with billion-dollar fines in the past decade.

In 2017, Google said it had made changes to comply with the ruling and began running ad auctions, in which it also participated alongside other services. “Our approach has worked for more than seven years, generating billions of clicks for over 800 comparison shopping services,” Google said.

The investigation into PaLM2 is part of a broader effort to examine how AI systems handle personal data.

European consumer advocacy group BEUC welcomed the court’s decision, saying it proved that EU competition law “remains extremely relevant” in digital markets.

Google is still appealing two other EU antitrust fines related to its Android operating system and its AdSense advertising platform. The three cases have sparked regulatory efforts around the world to step up scrutiny of the tech industry.

European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager says the case involving the price comparison service was one of the first attempts to regulate a digital company and has inspired similar efforts in other countries.

“This case was symbolic because it demonstrated that even the most powerful technology companies can be held accountable. No one is above the law,” Vestager said at a press conference.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kelvin Chan is a business reporter for the Associated Press. learn more

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