This week, Brazil’s National Data Protection Authority banned the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, from using the personal data of its child users in Brazil to train its artificial intelligence (AI).
The data regulator also banned X from sharing children’s personal data with third parties to train generative AI and ordered the company to amend its privacy policy to reflect these changes.
X, owned by Elon Musk, has five business days to comply with the decision, which was issued December 16. It has 10 business days to make further changes to its privacy policy that would disallow the company from collecting and using Brazilian users’ data for any unspecified purpose.
In July, an X user noticed that the company had, without informing users or requesting consent, opted all users into allowing X to use their data to train Grok, an AI chatbot built by another Elon Musk-owned company. In September, after the United Kingdom and 10 European data protection authorities filed complaints, X suspended its use of EU users’ data to train Grok.
A month later, X updated its privacy policy to allow third parties to train their AI using X users’ data.
Under Brazil’s data protection law, children’s personal data can only be processed “in their best interest” and when a parent or guardian gives “specific and distinguishable consent.”
Brazil’s National Data Protection Authority’s decision is the latest in a series of powerful moves to protect children’s data privacy from AI systems. Human Rights Watch had reported in June that personal photos and data of Brazilian children were being used to build powerful AI without the knowledge or consent of children or their parents. In July, the regulator issued a preliminary ban on Meta’s use of users’ data to train the company’s AI, citing the need to protect children’s privacy; it later upheld part of the ban to continue preventing Meta from using child users’ data to train its AI.
Other governments should take note. The scraping of children’s data into AI systems threatens children’s privacy and the misuse of such trained AI may further put children at risk of harm. As lawmakers around the world grapple with regulating AI, they should follow Brazil’s lead in proactively establishing data privacy safeguards that would help shape AI into a technology that promotes, not violates, children’s rights.
