EU probes Musk’s Grok AI feature over deepfakes of women, minors
The European Commission is examining whether X’s Grok tool met Digital Services Act duties concerning sexually explicit manipulated images of women and minors.
Summary
Al Jazeera reports that the European Commission has opened an investigation into Grok, the AI chatbot from Elon Musk, after the tool was used to make fake sexual pictures of women and minors. The announcement came on a Monday. It will examine whether the tool as used on X has met its obligations under the Digital Services Act, the EU law requiring social media firms to deal with illegal and harmful online content.
According to the report, Brussels will check whether X adequately limited the risk of illegal content circulating across the bloc, for instance doctored explicit imagery that could amount to child sexual abuse material. The inquiry follows an outcry after it emerged that users could prompt Grok to make deepfakes of women and children with simple requests like putting someone in a bikini or removing their clothes. A report from the nonprofit Centre for Countering Digital Hate estimated that within days Grok had generated roughly 3 million sexualised pictures depicting women and children.
In a statement, Ursula von der Leyen, who heads the Commission, declared that the bloc will not accept the digital undressing of women and children, and that consent and child protection will not be handed to tech companies to violate and monetise. Tech commissioner Henna Virkkunen called non-consensual sexual deepfakes a violent and unacceptable form of degradation.
The report adds context. X has faced EU scrutiny over its content rules since December 2023, and in December the EU ordered it to pay a fine of 120 million euros for breaching DSA transparency duties. Grok said this month it would limit image generation and editing to paying customers. The UK regulator Ofcom has also opened an investigation under the Online Safety Act.