- The EU’s privacy watchdog has opened a new ‘large-scale’ X investigation
- It is investigating whether ‘potentially harmful’ Grok images breached privacy
- This follows separate EU and UK investigations into X deepfakes
Elon Musk’s X platform (formerly known as Twitter) and its Grok AI bot are facing a new investigation into unauthorized and sexualized deepfake content, with Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) announcing an investigation.
According to MarketWatch, the watchdog is investigating whether X has complied with the EU’s strict General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which the Irish regulator is responsible for enforcing on behalf of the 27-nation bloc.
In recent weeks, there has been a storm of criticism directed at X in response to Grok being used to create and post millions of sexualized and revealing images – often based on real images (some of which appear to be minors), and used without consent.
The DPC says it “has been in dialogue with X about the ‘potentially harmful’ images since they began to circulate on a large scale, although X has not made any official comment. The social media platform has previously insisted that the necessary safeguards have been put in place, but regulators remain unconvinced.”
Investigations and raids
This new study adds to a separate EU inquiry looking at the same issues, but under laws requiring platforms to stop the spread of illegal material – which in this case could include child sexual abuse material. Britain, which is no longer part of the EU, has also launched its own investigation.
There were also raids earlier this month on X offices in Paris by French and EU law enforcement as part of ongoing investigations also covering the AI-generated images. As the Financial Times reports, X denied any wrongdoing at the time.
At this point, it’s not clear how long the new investigation will take or what its outcome might be, but there are certainly significant fines on the table – if X is found to have fallen short of the data protection protections it has put in place around these images.
Grok is powered by xAI, another Elon Musk company, which announced a merger with SpaceX a few days ago. AI-bot and its capabilities are available to all users with higher usage limits for those enrolled in premium plans.
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