EU investigating Grok and X over whether it made citizens ‘collateral damage’ for its services

The European Commission has announced it is investigating Elon Musk’s X and Grok, its AI generation tool, for “manipulated sexually explicit images, including content that may amount to child sexual abuse material.”

In December 2025, the social media site was hit with deepfake sexual imagery, where users could request Grok to generate pictures by simply tagging the account. The image generation tool was then made only available to subscribers. Grok then announced that measures were introduced to stop the “editing of images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis. This restriction applies to all users, including paid subscribers.”

The European Commission says that it is investigating whether or not X complied with Digital Services Act (DSA) obligations to:

• “Diligently assess and mitigate systemic risks, including of the dissemination of illegal content, negative effects in relation to gender-based violence, and serious negative consequences to physical and mental well-being stemming from deployments of Grok’s functionalities into its platform.”
• “Conduct and transmit to the Commission an ad hoc risk assessment report for Grok’s functionalities in the X service with a critical impact on X’s risk profile prior to their deployment.”

From here, the Commission will request evidence from X, whilst conducting interviews and inspecting precautions made by the site’s safety teams. The Commission can choose to accept any remedies made to address potential risks and problems with the site’s tool.

Henna Virkkunen, the executive vice president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy for the European Commission, says:

“Sexual deepfakes of women and children are a violent, unacceptable form of degradation. 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.”

This week’s report from the Commission also announces that the investigation it launched into X in 2023 will extend formal proceedings. This regards whether or not the site mitigated risks involving the dissemination of illegal content, whether it adequately combatted information manipulation, and whether X, as a platform, is adequately transparent.

In December last year, the Commission issued X a €120 million fine for the above, plus “the use of deceptive design, the lack of advertising transparency and insufficient data access for researchers.”