{"id":258344,"date":"2026-01-26T13:32:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T13:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/258344\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T13:32:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T13:32:07","slug":"eu-investigates-elon-musks-x-over-grok-ai-sexual-deepfakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/258344\/","title":{"rendered":"EU investigates Elon Musk’s X over Grok AI sexual deepfakes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The European Commission has launched an investigation<\/a> into Elon Musk’s X over concerns its AI tool Grok was used to create sexualised images of real people.<\/p>\n

It follows a similar announcement in January<\/a> from the UK watchdog Ofcom.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

A previous statement<\/a> 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”.<\/p>\n

Regina Doherty, a member of the European parliament representing Ireland, said the Commission would assess whether “manipulated sexually explicit images” have been shown to users in the EU.<\/p>\n

Campaigners and victims said the ability to generate sexually explicit pictures using the tool should have “never happened”<\/a>, and Ofcom said its investigation would remain ongoing.<\/p>\n

The EU regulator said it may “impose interim measures” if X refuses to implement meaningful adjustments. <\/p>\n

It said it had also extended its ongoing investigation launched in December 2023 over risks associated with X’s recommender systems – the algorithm that recommends specific posts to users.<\/p>\n

Before the Commission’s announcement, Elon Musk posted a picture on X<\/a> on Monday appearing to make light of the new restrictions in place around Grok. <\/p>\n

The X owner has previously criticised those scrutinising the app’s image-editing function – particularly the UK government – calling it “any excuse for censorship”.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, the Grok account on X claimed<\/a> more than 5.5 billion images were generated by the tool in just 30 days.<\/p>\n

Other investigations into the platform’s chatbot are underway in Australia, France and Germany. <\/p>\n

Grok was temporarily banned in Indonesia and Malaysia, although the latter has now lifted the ban.<\/p>\n

Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy at the Commission called the sexual deepfakes a “violent, unacceptable form of degradation”.<\/p>\n

“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,” she said.<\/p>\n

In a statement to Reuters, Doherty said there were “serious questions” over if platforms such as X were meeting legal obligations “to assess risks properly and to prevent illegal and harmful content from spreading”.<\/p>\n

“The European Union has clear rules to protect people online,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Those rules must mean something in practice, especially when powerful technologies are deployed at scale.<\/p>\n

“No company operating in the EU is above the law.”<\/p>\n

The move comes a month after the EU fined X \u20ac120m (\u00a3105m) over its blue tick badges<\/a>, saying they “deceive users” because the firm is not “meaningfully verifying” who is behind the account.<\/p>\n

In response, the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) accused the EU regulator of attacking and censoring US firms.<\/p>\n

“The European Commission’s fine isn’t just an attack on X, it’s an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments,” he said.<\/p>\n

His remarks were reposted by Musk, who added “absolutely”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The European Commission has launched an investigation into Elon Musk’s X over concerns its AI tool Grok was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258345,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,85,46,125],"class_list":["post-258344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}