Information privacy

A group of companies including Meta and Spotify blasted the European Union yesterday for its "fragmented and inconsistent" decision-making on data privacy and artificial intelligence (AI).

The firms along with several researchers and industry bodies signed an open letter claiming that Europe was already becoming less competitive and risked falling further behind in the age of AI.

Transport and Infrastructure Minister Abdulkadir Uraloğlu has dismissed media reports claiming that the personal data of millions of people had been stolen.

"There is currently no issue in Türkiye regarding data theft," Uraloğlu told reporters on Sept. 16 in the capital Ankara.

European Union regulators said on Thursday they're looking into one of Google's artificial intelligence models over concerns about its compliance with the bloc's strict data privacy rules.

Ireland's Data Protection Commission said it has opened an inquiry into Google's Pathways Language Model 2, also known as PaLM2.

The Dutch data protection watchdog said on Monday it hit ride-hailing app Uber with a 290-million-euro ($324 million) fine over the transfer of personal data of European drivers to U.S. servers.

The regulator said the transfers were a "serious violation" of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as they failed to appropriately protect driver information.

A privacy organization based in Vienna has lodged complaints against Elon Musk's "X" social network in eight European countries. The complaints, filed by the European Digital Rights Center, also known as Noyb ("None of Your Business"), accuse "X" (formerly "Twitter) of unlawfully using users' personal data for its artificial intelligence technology without obtaining consent.

A Vienna-based privacy campaign group lodged complaints in eight European countries against Elon Musk's X on Monday over "unlawfully" feeding the personal data of users into its artificial intelligence technology without their consent.

Meta Platforms will not launch its Meta AI models in Europe for now after the Irish privacy regulator told it to delay its plan to harness data from Facebook and Instagram users, the US social media company has said.

Meta Platforms was hit with 11 complaints on Thursday over proposed changes that would see it use personal data to train its artificial intelligence models without asking for consent, which may breach European Union privacy rules.

The Personal Data Protection Authority has imposed a 175,000-euro fine on the Migration and Asylum Ministry for the development and installation of the Hyperion and Centaur biometric control and surveillance systems at the reception centers for asylum seekers on islands of the Aegean.

Two conservative officials resigned and one was ousted on Friday amid a scandal involving the leak of an unspecified number of email addresses of Greek voters residing abroad.