The European Union has opened a new investigation into Elon Musk’s X over the platform’s recent proliferation of sexualized deepfakes of women and children.
The European Commission said it will determine whether the social media company properly assessed and mitigated risks before integrating the artificial intelligence chatbot Grok into its app. The body is particularly alarmed about recent reports of X users asking Grok to undress women, often seen wearing bikinis in digitally altered photos.
The commission said the sexually explicit content may be illegal in the EU, especially if the content specifically targets children, as has been the case in certain reported instances.
The investigation was launched under the Digital Services Act, the same law that the commission invoked to fine X roughly $140 million in December.
“Sexual deepfakes of women and children are a violent, unacceptable form of degradation,” EU tech commissioner Henna Virkkunen said in a statement on Sunday. “With this investigation, we will determine whether X has met its legal obligations under the DSA, or whether it treated rights of European citizens — including those of women and children — as collateral damage of its service.”
Adopted in 2022, the DSA essentially moderates content on online platforms to prioritize user safety by removing illegal content, including but not limited to child sexual abuse material.
The European Commission is also expanding its December 2023 investigation to establish whether X properly assessed and mitigated all risks associated with its decision to switch the app’s algorithm to a Grok-based system.
As it gathers evidence and information, the commission said it “may impose interim measures in the absence of meaningful adjustments to the X service” made by its billionaire owner.
As of Monday morning, Musk has not directly responded to the latest investigation, as he did after learning of the $140 million fine. However, he has commented on the Grok sexualization issue before.
At one point this month, Musk claimed he was “not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok” and stressed that the chatbot is designed to “refuse to produce anything illegal” in violation of the law in a country or state. He previously warned that anyone who created such illegal content using Grok would face the same consequences as if they had uploaded it themselves.
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In line with that warning, X announced that it would remove unlawful material, permanently suspend accounts that engage with such material, and cooperate with authorities when necessary. The platform also restricted the chatbot’s image-generation features to Grok’s paid subscribers.
Based on its new investigation, the EU apparently finds X’s changes were insufficient to address the underlying problem of Grok undressing women and children based on user requests.
