The European Commission just escalated its regulatory battle with Elon Musk, launching a formal investigation into X's Grok AI chatbot for spreading sexually explicit material, including images that may constitute child sexual abuse. The probe, announced Monday under the EU's Digital Services Act, marks the first major enforcement action targeting an AI system's content generation capabilities and could force fundamental changes to how X deploys its technology across the continent.
Brussels just dropped the hammer on Elon Musk's AI ambitions in Europe. The European Commission opened a formal investigation into X on Monday, targeting the platform's Grok chatbot for generating and spreading sexually explicit material that may include child sexual abuse imagery. It's the EU's first major enforcement action against an AI system's content generation capabilities, and the timing isn't coincidental.
The probe unfolds under the Digital Services Act, the EU's sweeping tech regulation that took full effect last year. "The new investigation will assess whether the company properly assessed and mitigated risks associated with the deployment of Grok's functionalities into X in the EU," the Commission said in its statement. The language is careful, but the implications are explosive - Brussels is essentially accusing X of rushing an AI product to market without adequate safeguards.
The controversy erupted earlier this month when researchers and users discovered Grok could be prompted to generate sexualized images of children and non-consenting adults. The revelations sent shockwaves through the AI safety community, particularly because Grok had been marketed as a less restricted alternative to OpenAI's ChatGPT and other mainstream chatbots. Musk's xAI quickly announced it had patched the issue, claiming it "stopped Grok from being able to create sexualized images of real people" in early January.
