Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) criticized President Donald Trump for “handing out special favors” to Big Tech companies and his “tech billionaire friends” by pressuring foreign countries to repeal their tech regulations, which the administration argues are discriminatory.
Warren made the claim in a letter to Jamieson Greer, the U.S. Trade Representative, who has been leading the administration’s deregulatory push abroad. The European Union, a bloc comprised of 27 member states, has been the target of this agenda over the past year.
The progressive lawmaker argued foreign countries have “commonsense” laws in place that hold tech companies accountable, citing the actions that European countries have taken against Elon Musk’s xAI and Grok for generating sexually explicit “deepfake” content.
“These recent events involving Grok reveal how the Trump Administration is using leverage generated by the tariffs to help Big Tech get away with hurting users—at home and abroad,” Warren wrote in the six-page letter on Tuesday. “If the Trump Administration had had its way, foreign governments would have been left without the tools they needed to immediately rein in Grok and limit its harm.”
In late December, the sexual deepfake scandal began when male users on X asked Grok to undress women or minors in digitally altered photos. The people in those images were either partially or fully stripped naked without their consent.
The controversy prompted the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, and the EU to investigate xAI and Grok based on their respective tech laws. For instance, the EU invoked the Digital Services Act to launch its investigation. That was the same law that the European Commission invoked to fine X roughly $140 million in December over a separate issue.
In Denmark, a court handed down an order last week prohibiting xAI and its Grok chatbot from creating and proliferating sexually explicit deepfakes without obtaining permission. The order particularly targets child sexual abuse material.
In the months since the scandal first arose, xAI has taken steps to restrict nonconsensual sexual deepfakes on X. Meanwhile, Musk has framed the foreign enforcement actions taken against his artificial intelligence company as “censorship,” especially when the U.K. opened its investigation.
Warren said the online safety laws on which these investigations are based are the “very laws that the Trump Administration and USTR have taken aim at in their ‘bilateral’ trade negotiations.” She also criticized Trump’s tariff policy.
“President Trump claimed that he launched his ill-conceived tariffs to help American workers. But in reality Big Tech has been the primary beneficiary of Trump’s disastrous trade policy, receiving exemptions from many key tariffs affecting the industry while the Trump Administration has used the tariffs to bully other countries into abandoning their regulations countering Big Tech abuses,” the Senate Democrat wrote. “At best, this is a colossal waste of American families’ money—who have footed much of the bill for Trump’s tariffs.”
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By making the request, Warren is seeking USTR records that show, in part, whether Musk or his companies lobbied the Trump administration to “oppose or undermine content moderation policies.” Greer must answer the senator’s questions by April 14.
Compared to his first term, Trump has grown increasingly friendly with tech executives. Not only has the president been cordial with Musk despite their public feud last year, but he recently named Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, and 11 other industry leaders to a White House science and technology council.
