European Commission launches investigation into Musk's X for violations of rules from Grok

The European Commission has launched a formal investigation into Grok, X chatbot, as the function of editing images of his integrated artificial intelligence tool was widely used to virtually strip pictures of real women and minor girls without their consent.

As reported for the first time by Handelsblatt, the investigation will consider whether the social media platform did enough to ease the risk of creating and distributing images.

If X is found to have violated the EU's online platform rules under the bloc's <x0nd Digital Services Act, the Commission can fine the company by 6% of its global annual lap.

Last December, the European Commission fined Elon Musk's social network 120m euros due to signs of accounting verification and advertising practices.

Concerns surfaced last summer after the platform's integrated artificial intelligence tool, Grok, improved with a pay feature known as “Spider Mode”, which allowed users to encourage it to create explosive content.

Earlier this month, as worldwide anger against this function grew, a spokesman for the Commission condemned this functionality with the harshest words.

This is not confusing, this is illegal, this is terrible, this is disgusting, this is no place in Europe”, he said.

In response to the anger and public alarm, X eventually applied measures to prevent Grok from allowing the editing of images of real people to put them in clothing and sexual intelligence situations, with restrictions applied to all users, including paid subscribers.

X also said that sexualised images of children modified by Grok had been removed from the platform and that users involved in their creation were banned.

“We take action against illegal content in X, including the material of child sex abuse (CSAM), removing it, suspending accounts forever and cooperating with local governments and implementing the law as necessary”, posted the X Safety account.

This is not the first time Grok has been put under consideration for alleged violations of European law. Last November, artificial intelligence chatbot generated restraint that denied the Holocaust.

Investigations into the platform's chatbot are currently under way in France, the UK and Germany, as well as Australia. Grock has been completely banned in Indonesia and Malaysia.

The commission said it has submitted a request for information according to the DSA and that it is still analyzing the answer.