Elon Musk’s X is now being officially investigated by the European Commission over concerns that AI chatbot Grok has been making deepfake sexual images of children
Elon Musk’s social media site X is to be investigated by the European Commission over the production of possible child sexual abuse material by the platform’s perverted AI chatbot.
The formal inquiry, which was launched on Monday, will investigate concerns Grok was used to create sexualised images of real people and also extends an investigation into X’s recommender systems, algorithms that help users discover new content.
If the site is found to have breached the rules of EU’s under the Digital Services Act, the Commission could fine the company up to 6% of its global annual turnover. It comes after the UK media watchdog launched a similar probe earlier this month.
Henna Virkkunen, the commission’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, said: “Sexual deepfakes of women and children are a violent, unacceptable form of degradation.
“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.”
Grok sparked international outrage by allowing users to digitally strip women and children and put them into provocative poses, with one young woman telling us earlier this month it generated more than 100 deepfake sexualised images of her in less than a week.
And researchers at the Center for Countering Digital Hate found Grok AI generated a whopping three million sexualised images in less than two weeks, including 23,000 that appeared to depict children.
A previous statement from X’s Safety account said the social media platform had stopped Grok from digitally altering pictures of people to remove their clothing in “jurisdictions where such content is illegal”.
The commission said its investigation will assess whether the company properly assessed and mitigated risks associated with the deployment of Grok’s functionalities into X in the EU.
A spokesman said: “This includes risks related to the dissemination of illegal content in the EU, such as manipulated sexually explicit images, including content that may amount to child sexual abuse material.
“These risks seem to have materialised, exposing citizens in the EU to serious harm.”
The move comes a month after the EU fined X €120m (£105m) over its blue tick badges, saying they “deceive users” because the firm is not “meaningfully verifying” who is behind the account.
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