The European Union is joining the growing global regulatory scrutiny of Grok’s ability to create sexual deepfakes.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, is launching a formal investigation into Elon Musk’s X under the Digital Services Act, its landmark digital platforms regulation that aims to reduce harmful content on the internet.

“Sexual deepfakes of women and children are a violent, unacceptable form of degradation,” The European Commission’s vice president for tech sovereignty, security, and democracy, Henna Virkkunen, said in a press release.

Back in December, X users found their new favorite use of the platform’s Grok chatbot feature: non-consensually undressing photos of women and children. Musk and his team didn’t just fail to respond to the incident on time; Musk himself reposted some Grok-generated sexualized images on his personal account and mocked critics’ concerns.

In response, jurisdictions around the world have begun launching formal probes into the platform. Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia banned Grok earlier this month over the issue, but the Philippines and Malaysia have since restored access after the company promised heightened safety measures. Both the United Kingdom and the state of California have also launched formal investigations earlier this month, Australia has raised concerns, and last week, Brazil gave xAI 30 days to stop the circulation of sexual deepfakes.

In response to mounting scrutiny, the company announced earlier this month that it would implement technical measures to prevent users from requesting “images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis,” and would limit generation and editing through the Grok account to paid subscribers. Subsequent testing of the standalone Grok app showed that it would still comply with requests to undress people in photos.

The EU’s investigation will probe whether X has been doing an adequate job of assessing and mitigating Grok’s risks.

“With this investigation, we will determine whether X has met its legal obligations under the DSA, or whether it treated rights of European citizens – including those of women and children – as collateral damage of its service,” Virkkunen said.

In parallel to this new investigation, the Commission is also extending a previous investigation into X’s recommender systems, which introduce users to new content. It was recently revealed that the system is also Grok-based.

The Commission also fined X for about $140 million just last month over the deceptive design of its blue checkmark features and lack of transparency around advertisers.

The EU will now continue to gather evidence on X, and could impose interim measures if it determines X is not cooperating. But even if Grok is somehow taken under control with global regulatory action, there is still a long way to go before the rampant problem of non-consensual deepfake pornography, often targeting women and children, is addressed.

Nearly all popular deepfake generators offer explicit and high-quality video generation, and some even list sexual scenarios that can be staged with fake images, a WIRED review of 50 deepfake websites published on Monday showed. The problem is also rife on Telegram, WIRED reported, with more than 1.4 million accounts signed up to 39 deepfake creation bots and channels.



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