The European Fee on Monday mentioned it opened an investigation into Elon Musk’s X over the spreading of sexually specific materials by the AI chatbot Grok.
The probe is being performed underneath the European Union’s sweeping Digital Providers Act (DSA) regulation.
“The brand new investigation will assess whether or not the corporate correctly assessed and mitigated dangers related to the deployment of Grok’s functionalities into X within the EU,” the Fee, the EU’s government arm, mentioned in an announcement.
“This consists of dangers associated to the dissemination of unlawful content material within the EU, corresponding to manipulated sexually specific photographs, together with content material which will quantity to baby sexual abuse materials.”
The Fee mentioned the dangers “appear to have materialised, exposing residents within the EU to severe hurt.”
“Deepfakes are a troubling, frontier subject that decision for tailor-made, considerate responses,” U.S. Below Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers instructed CNBC.
“Erecting a ‘Nice Firewall’ to ban X, or lobotomizing AI, is neither tailor-made nor considerate. We stand able to work with the EU on higher concepts.”
Grok got here underneath hearth this yr after customers had been in a position to immediate the system to generate sexualized photographs of kids and different people.
Earlier this month, Musk’s firm mentioned it had “applied technological measures” to stop the Grok account on X “from permitting the modifying of photographs of actual individuals in revealing clothes corresponding to bikinis.” The corporate additionally restricted picture creation modifying by Grok on X to paid subscribers. The standalone Grok app, which doesn’t share photographs publicly, nonetheless allowed non-paying customers to generate imagery of ladies and youngsters.
European regulators have joined a rising checklist of authorities trying into Grok. The U.Ok., India, and Malaysia are amongst plenty of different international locations investigating the sexualized imagery generated by Grok.
X has been within the crosshairs of the European Fee underneath the DSA, which supplies the regulator the flexibility to levy massive fines on tech firms. The DSA is designed to manage on-line platforms, their content material, and habits with shoppers.
On Monday, the Fee mentioned it’s extending an investigation that started in 2023 into X and its advice system. In December, the Fee fined X 120 million euros ($142.3 million) for breaching its transparency obligations underneath the DSA.
– CNBC’s Lora Kolodny and Kai Nicol-Schwarz contributed to this report.
