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LONDON (AP) — Ireland’s data privacy watchdog said Friday it’s investigating Elon Musk’s social media platform X over its use of personal data to train his artificial intelligence chatbot Grok.

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The Data Protection Commission said it has opened an inquiry into “the processing of personal data comprised in publicly-accessible posts” that European users posted on X.

“The purpose of this inquiry is to determine whether this personal data was lawfully processed in order to train the Grok LLMs” under the bloc’s data privacy law, the commission said in a statement posted online. read more

I receive a great many inquiries about retirement accounts. One area of particular interest is Roth conversions.

Fortunately, IRA expert Ed Slott and his staff spend a great deal of time and effort addressing the most important questions you should be asking before you decide that a conversion makes sense for you. The following questions are very important. If you haven’t considered all of them, you probably should not be completing a conversion.

Question 1: When will you need the funds you are considering converting? If you are not looking at a 10- to 15-year time horizon, you probably should not be considering a conversion.

Question 2: Do you believe that future tax rates when you will be likely to withdraw funds from your account will be higher than current tax rates? If you believe that it is likely that future tax rates will be much higher than current tax rates, then you have more of an incentive to do a conversion.

Question 3: Where will the money come from if you do a conversion now? Do you have the funds available to do a conversion? Before you convert, it is essential that you determine what the income tax liability will be if you do a conversion. Naturally, you need to know what your marginal tax bracket will be, based on all of the other income you will be reporting in the year of conversion. It’s most cost- effective if your funds are available from non-IRA funds. read more

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER and JOSH BOAK, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. consumer sentiment plunged in April, the fourth consecutive month of declines, in a seemingly sharp rebuke of President Donald Trump’s trade wars that have fueled anxiety over possible job losses and rising inflation.

The preliminary reading of the University of Michigan’s closely watched consumer sentiment index, released Friday, fell 11% on a monthly basis to 50.8, the lowest since the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past year, sentiment has tumbled 34%.

The decline was “pervasive and unanimous across age, income, education, geographic region, and political affiliation,” said Joanne Hsu, director of the survey.

The share of respondents expecting unemployment to rise in the coming months increased for the fifth straight month and is now the highest since 2009 during the Great Recession.

While consumer sentiment is not always a reliable indicator of the overall economy, it has at times reflected shifting vibes in how the public feels about presidential leadership. Sentiment among Republicans has dropped 6% over the past month as Trump teased, then rolled out a series of aggressive tariffs, only to institute a 90-day pause of some import taxes Wednesday. read more

By PAUL WISEMAN, Associated Press Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. wholesale prices fell last month in another sign that inflationary pressures are easing. But President Donald Trump’s trade wars cloud the outlook as new, punishing tariffs are launched by Beijing and Washington.

The producer price index — which tracks inflation before it hits consumers — fell 0.4% from February, first drop since October 2023, the Labor Department said Friday. Compared with a year earlier, producer prices rose 2.7%, down from a 3.2% year-over-year gain in February and much lower than the 3.3% economists had forecast. Gasoline prices fell 11.1% from February and egg prices, which had skyrocketed because of bird flu, plummeted 21.3%.

Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core wholesale inflation fell 0.1% from February, the first drop since July. Compared with a year earlier, core producer prices rose 3.3% and lower than economists had forecast.

The report comes a day after the Labor Department delivered good news on inflation at the consumer level. Its consumer price index rose just 2.4% last month from March 2024, the smallest year-over-year gain since September. Core consumer prices posted the smallest year-over-year increase in nearly four years. read more