The European Commission has opened a formal investigation into X within the framework of the EU Digital Services Law for the sexually explicit images generated by Grok AI. This investigation will study whether the company adequately evaluated and mitigated the risks associated with the deployment of Elon Musk’s Artificial Intelligence functions on the social network in the EU.
This includes risks related to the dissemination of illicit content in the European Union, such as sexually explicit images manipulated by this AI. Including content that may constitute material of sexual abuse of minors. These risks appear to have materialized, exposing EU citizens to significant harm.
In light of this, the Commission will investigate whether
It will also assess whether the social network complies with its obligation to prepare and transmit to the European Commission a specific risk assessment report for Grok functions in service X that have a critical impact on the risk profile of the social network before deploying it.
In addition, the Commission has expanded the formal procedure it opened against X in December 2023 to establish whether Among them, the impact of its switch to a Grok-based recommendation system, which it recently announced.
If the above is proven, the non-compliance would constitute violations of article 23 of the EU Digital Services Law, sections 1 and 2, as well as section 1 of its article 35 and section 2 of its article 42.
From now on, the European Commission will continue to gather evidence of these events, for which, among other things, it will make additional requests for information, in addition to carrying out different interviews or inspections. In addition, it may impose provisional measures if X does not make significant adjustments.
By opening a formal procedure on this issue, the European Commission can take further enforcement measures, such as adopting a decision related to non-compliance with the law. Of course, it is also empowered to accept any commitment that X assumes to remedy the issues that are the subject of the procedure.
According to Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice President for Technological Sovereignty, Security and Democracy of the European Commission«sexual deepfakes of women and children are a violent and unacceptable form of degradation. With this investigation, we will determine whether«.
