*

Irish Data Protection Commission is lead EU regulator for

X

*

It can levy fines of up to 4% of global turnover

*

Trump, Musk have harshly criticized EU tech regulators

(Adds quote in paragraph 3; Adds background and context

throughout)

DUBLIN, April 11 (Reuters) - Ireland's data regulator on

Friday said it had opened an investigation into social media

platform X over the use of personal data collected from European

Union users to train its AI system Grok.

Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) is the lead

EU regulator for X due to the location of its EU operations in

the country. It has the power to impose fines of up to 4% of a

company's global revenue under the EU's strict General Data

Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The inquiry will look at "the processing of personal data

comprised in publicly-accessible posts posted on the X social

media platform by EU/EEA users, for the purposes of training

generative artificial intelligence models," the DPC said in a

statement.

U.S. President Donald Trump and other members of his

administration have

criticised

EU regulation of U.S. companies and described fines imposed

on U.S. tech companies by the EU as a form of taxation.

X owner Elon Musk, the world's richest man and a top

adviser to Trump, has also

railed against

EU regulations, mainly those imposed directly by Brussels

on online content.

The decision follows a court case last year in which the

Irish regulator sought an order to restrict X from processing

the data of EU users for the purposes of developing its AI

systems.

X agreed to

stop training its AI systems

using personal data collected from EU users before they had

the option to withdraw their consent. The Irish regulator

ended its court proceedings

weeks later, saying X had agreed the limits on a permanent

basis.

The powerful Irish privacy regulator has fined the likes

of Microsoft's ( MSFT ) LinkedIn, TikTok and Meta since

it was given sanctioning powers in 2018. Its fines to date of

Meta total almost

3 billion euros

.

X, or Twitter as it was then called, has not faced

sanctions since the DPC fined it 450,000 euros ($511,000) in

2020, the first penalty the regulator handed out under the new

data privacy system.

($1 = 0.8808 euros)

(Writing by Conor Humphries;

Editing by Catarina Demony)