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By Shane Croucher
Senior Editor
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The European Commission has opened an investigation into X, Elon Musk's social media platform, and the AI chatbot Grok over the alleged creation of sexually explicit deepfake images of women and children.
Musk said previously that he had seen "literally zero" evidence that Grok had created nude images of children.
"Sexual deepfakes of women and children are a violent, unacceptable form of degradation," Henna Virkkunen, the executive vice president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy at the European Commission, said in a statement.
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The commission also said it had extended a separate probe into X of its recommendations algorithm. Opened in 2023, that probe has so far resulted in a 120 million euro (then-$140 million) fine in December for breaches of the transparency requirements.
Both probes fall under the European Union's Digital Services Act (DSA), which regulates technology companies in the bloc. If the commission finds against them, Musk's companies could face large fines and other enforcement actions.
Newsweek has contacted Musk's xAI company for comment via email.
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The DSA has been a sharp point of tension between the EU and the Trump administration, which accuses Brussels of seeking to stifle major U.S. technology companies for political reasons. But the EU says it is fairly enforcing its rules to protect European consumers from aggressive and unlawful practices by American firms.
"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," Virkkunen said.
The executive of the 27-nation EU said it was looking into whether X had done enough as required by the bloc's digital regulations to contain the risks of spreading illegal content such as "manipulated sexually explicit images."
That includes content that "may amount to child sexual abuse material," the European Commission said. These risks have now materialized, the commission continued, exposing the bloc's citizens to "serious harm."
On January 14, Musk addressed some of the criticism about Grok's alleged creation of nude images of children and women. He wrote on X, "I not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok. Literally zero."
"Obviously, Grok does not spontaneously generate images, it does so only according to user requests," Musk added.
He continued: "When asked to generate images, it will refuse to produce anything illegal, as the operating principle for Grok is to obey the laws of any given country or state. There may be times when adversarial hacking of Grok prompts does something unexpected. If that happens, we fix the bug immediately."
On January 4, Sarah Rogers, the under secretary for public diplomacy at the U.S. State Department, wrote on X, "The DSA has two explicit purposes, evident in the structure of the law: (1) extort and extract from American businesses; and (2) suppress speech flagged by left-wing NGOs."
Musk is a major political ally of and donor to U.S. President Donald Trump, a Republican, though the two men fell out dramatically last summer before patching up their relationship.
This article includes reporting by the Associated Press.
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