AI and GDPR: What Your Legal Team Needs to Know

In this episode of the Tech Your Business podcast, I look at the intersection between AI and the GDPR regulations that affect so many businesses today.

Just a couple of months back, Clear View AI was hit with a €30.5 million fine by the Dutch Data Protection Agency for GDPR violations related to their AI systems. If your business operates in or serves customers in the EU, this story should make you pay attention. The regulators are watching closely when it comes to AI and data protection.

Why This Matters for Your Business

Many businesses are implementing AI without fully understanding the legal implications. Your marketing team might be excited about AI-powered customer insights and your operations folks want automated decision-making, but has anyone consulted your legal team?

In this podcast episode, I break down three critical things you need to know about using AI while staying compliant with GDPR regulations.

1. How You Protect and Store User Data

Before using AI with customer data, you need to be careful about how you’re collecting and storing it.

GDPR requires either specific consent or a legitimate business need to store customer data. Plus, you need to track every step in your data collection process.

Common mistakes include:

• Collecting more data than necessary
• Not explaining to customers why you need their data
• Not keeping proper records of what you’ve collected and how

The Clear View example I mentioned, with their €30.5 million fine, demonstrates what happens when companies don’t comply with GDPR requirements for data collection.

A key question to ask yourself: Is your business audit-ready for the data it collects and holds? If not, it’s time to fix that.

2. Explaining How Your AI Makes Decisions

Article 22 of the GDPR specifically covers automated decision-making. It states that people have the right to know if decisions about them are being made algorithmically rather than by humans, and you need to be able to explain the logic behind those decisions.

If you’re using AI for things like:

• Patient diagnosis
• Hiring decisions
• Loan approvals

You need to have logs and explanations for how those decisions are reached.

Using interpretable AI models that explain their thinking process is helpful, and always have humans reviewing AI decisions. This not only keeps you GDPR-compliant but also ensures fairness.

3. Giving Users Control Over Their Data

This is fundamental to the GDPR. Users should be able to:

• Access their data at any time
• Correct their data if needed
• Delete their data (the “right to be forgotten”)
• Move their data elsewhere

When a user asks what data you have on them, you typically have about a month to produce everything – which is only possible with strict record-keeping.

Clear View was also fined an additional €20 million by French authorities because they couldn’t produce customer data when requested.

Ask yourself: Can your business easily provide customer data and allow customers to delete or download their data whenever they want?

Keeping Your Business Out of Trouble

The key to avoiding GDPR issues with your AI systems comes down to documentation and clear processes.

In the next episode of this series, I’ll be talking about private AI systems – AI models hosted within your own infrastructure that can eliminate many of these compliance challenges.

Want to Learn More?

If you found this episode helpful, make sure to subscribe to the Tech Your Business podcast. For more information about AI implementation that keeps you on the right side of regulations, visit our website at targetict.co.uk.

Remember, this isn’t legal advice – for that, you’ll want to speak with a qualified lawyer. But it is a good starting point for conversations with your legal team before your next AI implementation.

This blog post summarizes Episode 2 of our three-part series on AI security and compliance. Catch up on Episode 1: “Is Your Company’s Data Safe with AI?” and stay tuned for Episode 3 next week where we talk about hosting your AI models privately.