AI companies could gain wider access to Europeans’ personal data under EU plan
The EU wants to loosen data protection rules to please AI companies.
European Parliament in Brussels. Photo by Alexandros Michailidis/Shutterstock
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- EU Member States back changing GDPR rules to ease AI training on Europeans’ personal data without consent.
- The proposed Article 88bis would treat AI data processing as a legitimate interest for companies.
- Privacy group noyb says the change would give Big Tech broad access to data collected across Europe.
- The proposal still needs the European Parliament’s position and could face court challenges.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
EU Member States are in favor of amending the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to make it easier for tech companies to train their AI models with European citizens’ personal data without consent.
It revolves around Article 88bis of the Digital Omnibus, a set of proposals developed by the European Commission to simplify existing rules on privacy, data protection, and AI while maintaining “a high level of protection” at the same time.
According to the approved text by the Council of the European Union, processing personal data “in the context of AI” should be lawful, and companies shouldn’t need to ask users for consent.
Instead, it’s automatically assumed that companies have an overriding “legitimate interest” if they use or train any AI product.
Austrian privacy advocacy group noyb is appalled by the very idea.
“The EU Member States have agreed to take our data and feed it to AI companies for free. For decades, we have been telling people that their data is safe and, at best, is used for ads. Now, Google, Meta, and Microsoft can just use all the data they’ve collected with almost no limits and for any project that involves some ‘AI’ component,” noyb Chairman Max Schrems says in a response, calling it “the biggest gift that EU Member States have ever made to US Big Tech.”
Adopting the amendment feels like selling European data to the US and China and giving tech companies a blank check for an entire technology, Schrems argues, suggesting that such an approach is “madness.”
“It’s like saying anything goes, no matter what you do, as long as it’s done with AI. If something is illegal in an Excel spreadsheet, it’s legal if done with an AI agent. It’s utterly absurd to give preferential treatment to a high-risk technology over every other computer system,” Schrems states.
European Parliament approval needed
The proposal hasn’t been officially adopted, as the European Parliament has yet to adopt a position. Once the European Parliament has taken a position, further negotiations on the proposal will follow.
If the European Commission erodes the fundamental rights of European citizens, Schrems says he’s willing to call in the European Court of Justice (CJEU).
“If the legislator has lost all sense of proportion and direction, then the people can only turn to the courts. Any extreme law that has a high risk of being overturned would at the same time only create more legal uncertainty instead of promised simplification,” the noyb Chairman concludes.
