Google’s lead EU privacy regulator opened an inquiry on Thursday into whether the search engine adequately protected European Union users’ personal data before using it to help develop its foundational AI Model.

 

Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), the lead EU regulator for most of the top U.S. internet firms due to the location of their EU operations in Ireland, said the probe concerned the Alphabet Inc unit’s Pathways Language Model 2 (PaLM 2).

 

“This statutory inquiry forms part of the wider efforts of the DPC, working in conjunction with its EU/EEA (European Economic Area) peer regulators, in regulating the processing of the personal data of EU/EEA data subjects in the development of AI models and systems,” the DPC said in a statement.