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EU Governments Back GDPR Change to Allow AI Training on Personal Data Without Consent

October 23, 2026 at 12:32 EDT

Foundation Models
Policy & Regulation

The European Union's Council of Ministers approved new rules on Wednesday that would allow artificial intelligence companies including OpenAI, Google, and Meta to train models on Europeans' personal data without obtaining explicit consent. The shift represents a significant relaxation of the continent's strict data protection standards, implemented through a "legitimate interest" legal basis in the proposed Article 88bis of the General Data Protection Regulation.

October 23, 2026 · EU Council

GDPR Opens Door to AI Training Without Consent

EU governments approved a legal framework allowing major AI companies to process Europeans' personal data automatically, without explicit user permission, for model development and operation.

Major AI firms affected

Decades

of retroactive data use

Article 88bis

New GDPR basis

Consents required

What Legitimate Interest Enables

Automatic lawfulness: No consent needed when processing occurs "in context of AI"
Retroactive scope: Applies to data collected decades ago from non-customers
Broad applications: Covers training, inference, content moderation, ad targeting, synthetic content
Minimal burden: Companies assume legitimate interest; limited user opt-out mechanisms

Industry Position

EU governments frame the change as regulatory simplification to support competitive AI development and reduce compliance burden.

Privacy Concerns

noyb and EU data protection authorities warn of "digital expropriation" and argue the changes fundamentally weaken GDPR protections.

Next Steps

The Council's mandate now enters trilogue negotiations with the European Parliament. Parliamentary approval is required before the Data Omnibus component—containing these GDPR changes—becomes law. Several member states and EU privacy authorities have formally objected to aspects of the proposal.

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