Brussels has finally had enough of Grok churning out sleaze and kiddie porn in the name of its owner, Elon Musk’s view of free speech.
For those not in the know, Grok users have been able to take pictures of people they fancy and use the AI to undress them or put them in skimpy clothes. If this sexual harassment were not enough, sicko kiddie fiddlers could do the same thing with child images. They have then been posting the results for clicks, clout and worse.
An EU probe, announced on 26 January 2026 under the EU’s Digital Services Act, will assess whether xAI mitigated the risks of deploying Grok on X and the spread of content that “may amount to child sexual abuse material”.
European Commission, tech chief Henna Virkkunen said: “Non-consensual sexual deepfakes of women and children are a violent, unacceptable form of degradation.”
She made clear that the EU is treating this as a legal duty, not a vibes check, and that the DSA can bite with fines worth up to six per cent of worldwide annual turnover.
European Commission, tech chief Henna Virkkunen said: “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.”
An EU official was not impressed by the early fixes, saying: “With the harm that is exposed to individuals that are subject to these images, we have not been convinced so far by what mitigating measures the platform has taken to have that under control”.
The European move follows UK media regulator Ofcom opening a formal investigation into Grok, while Malaysia and Indonesia have banned the chatbot outright.
After the backlash, xAI restricted Grok to paying subscribers and said it has “implemented technological measures” to stop Grok from generating certain sexualised images.
Musk said: “Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content”.
However, this is the same outfit that built its AI with fewer content “guardrails” than rivals such as OpenAI and Google, while Musk tried to sell Grok as “maximally truth-seeking”.
The commission fined X €120m in December 2025 for transparency breaches, citing issues including data access, transparency in ad repositories, and the design of its blue ticks, which set off a predictable tantrum from Musk and his chums in the US government.
