JAKARTA – Use of Grok, the AI chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, is now banned by a quarter of companies in Europe, according to research by cybersecurity firm Netskope.

This percentage is significantly higher compared to ChatGPT—which is blocked by only 9.8% of organisations in Europe—or Google’s Gemini, which is restricted by 9.2% of European companies.

Yet, two years ago, when ChatGPT was just one year old, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, had threatened to withdraw ChatGPT from Europe in response to what he described as overly strict regulations.

Over time, the use of AI has expanded, with Netskope data showing that 91% of organisations have integrated cloud-based chatbots into their operations.

However, not all forms of the technology have been well received. For instance, Grok has been criticised for privacy and security concerns, according to The Next Web.

“Businesses are becoming aware that not all apps are the same in the way they handle data privacy, ownership of data that is shared with the app, or in how much detail they reveal about the way they train the model with any data that is shared within prompts,” said Neil Thacker, global privacy and data protection officer at Netskope.

As reported by the Financial Times, the European Union’s AI Act was initially designed to regulate the use of AI in high-risk sectors, such as medical tools, credit distribution, and recruitment.

However, following the launch of ChatGPT, the European Parliament expanded the regulations to cover more general use cases. (ZH)