DUBLIN, Aug 8 (Reuters) - Social media platform X agreed

on Thursday not to train its AI systems for now using the

personal data collected from European Union users before they

had the option to withdraw their consent, an Irish court heard

on Thursday.

Ireland's Data Protection Commission, the lead EU regulator

for most of the top U.S. internet firms due to the location of

their EU operations in the country, this week sought an order to

suspend or restrict X from processing the data of users for the

purposes of developing, training or refining its AI systems.

Elon Musk-owned X has said it allows all users to decide if

their public posts can be used by the platform's artificial

intelligence chatbot, Grok. To do so users have to untick a box

in their privacy settings to opt out.

However Judge Leonie Reynolds said it was clear that X began

processing EU users' data to train its AI systems on May 7 and

only offered the option to opt out from July 16. The feature was

also not initially rolled out to all users, she said.

A lawyer for the platform formerly known as Twitter said the

data collected from EU users between May 7 and Aug 1 would not

be used until proceedings on the Irish Data Protection

Commission's (DPC) order are decided by the court.

Lawyers for X are due to file opposition papers against the

suspension order by Sept 4, the court heard.

On a post on the social media platform on Wednesday, the X

Global Government Affairs account said the order sought by the

regulator was "unwarranted, overboard and singles out X without

any justification."

The regulator's concerns over how X uses the data follows

Meta Platforms' ( META ) decision in June not to launch its Meta

AI models in Europe for the time being after the Irish DPC told

it to delay its plan.

Alphabet's Google also agreed to delay and make

changes to its Gemini AI chatbot earlier this year following

consultations with the Irish regulator.