European Union The Latest To Investigate Grok

The European Union (EU) has become the latest body to investigate X over its Grok AI tool and the creation of sexualized images.

The European Commission has joined with the Californian attorney general and UK regulator Ofcom in opening a probe into Grok, which it says “will assess whether the company properly assessed and mitigated risks associated with the deployment of Grok’s functionalities into X in the EU.”

Separately, the commission has extended its probe establishing whether Elon Musk’s platform “properly assessed and mitigated all systemic risks associated with its recommender systems, including the impact of its recently announced switch to a Grok-based recommender system.”

Both are being probed under the Digital Services Act. If the site is found to have breached the act, the Commission could fine X up to 6% of its global annual turnover.

The commission’s move is the latest setback for X over Grok. Earlier this month, X bowed to pressure and stopped the image tool from editing photos of real people after a backlash around the world to edits of women in revealing clothing.

The EU and Musk are far from friendly. In December, X was fined €120M ($142M) by the commission due to the deceptive design of its ‘blue checkmark’, the lack of transparency of its advertising repository and the failure to provide access to public data for researchers. X is yet to pay and many in the U.S. have criticized the EU over the move. Musk has previously called the EU “undemocratic” and said it should be “abolished.”