Grok in the crosshairs as EU launches deepfake porn probe

While Elon Musk lauds his proprietary Grok AI bot as a vital tool in the search for “deeper truth and appreciation of beauty,” as he said on X, European regulators are decidedly less optimistic about the tech billionaire’s latest offering. This week, the European Commission announced it had opened an official investigation into the chatbot, alleging in a press release that Grok “manipulated sexually explicit images, including content that may amount to child sexual abuse material” and then disseminated that material across the European Union via Musk’s X platform. Already under similar legal pressure from several individual nations, is this latest legal salvo a sign that Musk may have met his regulatory match?

EU citizens as ‘collateral damage’

The newly announced investigation is “likely to escalate a confrontation” between European leaders and the Musk-aligned Trump administration over international digital content moderation, The New York Times said. Grok’s ability to provide users with digitally manipulated sexual imagery is a “violent, unacceptable form of degradation,” said European Commission Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy Henna Virkkunen to the BBC. The investigation seeks to assess whether X has “met its legal obligations” under Europe’s Digital Services Act (DSA) or if it treats the “rights of European citizens” as “collateral damage of its service.”

“Despite pressure from Washington,” the EU has “insisted it will enforce its rules” as the body has “grappled” with the Trump administration on “multiple other fronts,” said Le Monde. “From the Ukraine war to trade to Greenland.” The DSA, which undergirds much of the EU’s digital legal framework, is “reviled by Silicon Valley technology companies,” which have “strengthened their ties with the Trump administration,” Bloomberg said. The White House, for its part, has “threatened retaliation in the past” and sanctioned Thierry Breton, the former EU commissioner, “who spearheaded the DSA.”

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Broader regulatory push

EU investigators pursuing allegations of digital malfeasance have “joined a growing list of authorities looking into Grok,” said CNBC. India, Malaysia and the U.K. are “among a number of other countries investigating the sexualized imagery generated by Grok.” Musk has also been “facing mounting scrutiny in Europe” even before this latest investigation was announced, said the Times. Last month, X was fined nearly $150 million in DSA violations for “deceptive design, advertising transparency and data sharing with outside researchers.” And beyond this week’s newly announced investigation, the EU has also moved to “expand a 2023 probe” into X’s recent algorithmic switch that moved the social media platform’s recommendations engine to a “Grok-based system,” Politico said.

Currently, there’s “no deadline” for the European Commission to “resolve” its newly launched investigation into Grok, said NBC News. Should X be found in violation of the DSA, it could then be treated as a “noncompliant” company and fined “up to 6%” of its “global annual turnover,” said Forbes.