The European Fee on Monday stated 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 below the European Union’s sweeping Digital Companies 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 govt arm, stated in a press release.
“This contains dangers associated to the dissemination of unlawful content material within the EU, resembling manipulated sexually specific pictures, together with content material which will quantity to youngster sexual abuse materials.”
The Fee stated the dangers “appear to have materialised, exposing residents within the EU to critical hurt.”
“Deepfakes are a troubling, frontier difficulty that decision for tailor-made, considerate responses,” U.S. Beneath 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 below fireplace this 12 months after customers had been in a position to immediate the system to generate sexualized pictures of kids and different people.
Earlier this month, Musk’s firm stated it had “applied technological measures” to forestall the Grok account on X “from permitting the modifying of pictures of actual individuals in revealing clothes resembling bikinis.” The corporate additionally restricted picture creation modifying by means of Grok on X to paid subscribers. The standalone Grok app, which doesn’t share pictures publicly, nonetheless allowed non-paying customers to generate imagery of girls and kids.
European regulators have joined a rising record 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 below the DSA, which provides the regulator the flexibility to levy giant fines on tech corporations. The DSA is designed to manage on-line platforms, their content material, and conduct with shoppers.
On Monday, the Fee stated 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 below the DSA.
– CNBC’s Lora Kolodny and Kai Nicol-Schwarz contributed to this report.
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