Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, which enforces the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, said it had launched a statutory inquiry into the tech giant’s Pathways Language Model 2, or PaLM 2.

PaLM 2 was launched in May 2023 and predated Google’s latest Gemini models, which power its AI products. Gemini, launched in December of the same year, is now the core model behind its text and image-generation offering.

The inquiry will assess whether the company breached its GDPR obligations on the processing of the personal data of citizens of the EU and European Economic Area.

Under the framework, companies must conduct a data protection impact assessment before handling such information when its use is likely to pose a high risk to individuals' rights and freedoms.

A Google spokesperson said: “We take seriously our obligations under the GDPR and will work constructively with the DPC to answer their questions.”

However,  the DPC has already got other tech companies to back peddle on their AI plans.

In June, Meta paused its plans to train its model Llama on public content shared by adults on Facebook and Instagram across Europe, following discussions with the Irish regulator. Meta subsequently limited the availability of some of its AI products to users in the region.

A month later, X users discovered they were being “opted in” to have their posts on the site used to train systems on Elon [look at me] Musk’s xAI start-up.

The platform suspended its processing of several weeks’ worth of European user data that had been harvested to train its Grok AI model following legal proceedings by the DPC. That was the first time the regulator had used its powers to take such action against a tech firm.