LinkedIn’s plans to use public posts and user profile data to train its AI have been altered by the Ireland and Dutch Data Protection Authorities (DPAs). The trend of mega-cap technology companies(1) such as Microsoft, which owns LinkedIn as a subsidiary, Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, and Oracle investing billions of dollars in AI development has placed them under heightened scrutiny from privacy regulators.

The European Union (EU) has implemented the first comprehensive, risk-based AI regulation, which entered into force on 1 August 2025.(2) As AI models develop, concerns arise regarding the use of large-scale datasets that may include personal data.(3) The European Commission stresses that AI models should operate within a governance framework aligned with data privacy laws,(4) and DPAs have started enforcing with GDPR privacy principles as their baseline.