India, EU investigate Musk’s X after Grok creates fake child pornography

Elon Musk‘s X is under investigation by authorities in Europe, India and Malaysia after its Grok chatbot allowed users to create and share AI-generated sexualized images of children and women.

Ofcom, the British media watchdog, said he requests information from X, who belongs to xAI, regarding Grok’s problems. And on Sunday, a Brazilian lawmaker said on social media that she had asked the federal prosecutor and the country’s data protection authority to suspend the use of Grok until an investigation is completed.

The investigations follow a global increase in recent weeks in the use of Grok to create and share non-consensual intimate images, or NCII, derived from photos or videos of real people in response to user prompts. The disturbing images were widely shared on X.

Musk’s company recently updated its Grok Imagine features, allowing for easier generation of images from text prompts on the platform.

While security experts and technology critics have decried the proliferation of exploitative images and clips on

To a press conference On Monday, European Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier said the authority was “studying this issue very seriously” and was “well aware” that X and Grok “now offer a spicy mode showing explicit sexual content with childish images.”

“It’s not ‘spicy,’” Regnier said. “It’s illegal. It’s appalling. It’s disgusting. This is how we see it, and it has no place in Europe.”

Late last week, India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology ordered X to conduct a “comprehensive technical, procedural and governance review” of Grok. The company had until January 5 to comply.

The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission said over the weekend he will investigate X and call in company representatives.

“MCMC urges all platforms accessible in Malaysia to implement safeguards aligned with Malaysian laws and online safety standards, particularly with regard to their AI-based features, chatbots and image manipulation tools,” the group said in a statement.

In the United States, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) called on the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the matter in an interview with CNBC. Dani Pinter, legal director and director of the Law Center at NCOSE, said there is “not a lot of legal precedent on these specific issues.”

However, she said federal laws prohibit the creation and distribution of child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, and that this can be applied to virtually created content “when it depicts an identifiable child or depicts a child engaged in sexually explicit conduct.”

These laws include the Take It Down Act, which was approved by the First Lady. Melania Trump before it was adopted last year.

The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment. The FTC declined to comment. XAI did not provide comment beyond an automated response.

Musk’s social media company made its first public statement on the matter on Saturday in a post on the official X Safety account.

“We are taking action against illegal content on

Musk wrote, in a separate post on

The next day, an xAI employee named Ethan He wrote in an article On X, Grok Imagine was updated, but it did not specify any changes regarding the ability to create harmful explicit images.

Musk and X have a history of allowing users who have created posts depicting child sexual exploitation to remain on the platform.

In 2023, X briefly suspended and then reinstated the account of a user named Dom Lucre after he posted “photos of child exploitation associated with the criminal conviction of an Australian in the Philippines.” Mashable reported. Musk said at the time that X decided to remove Lucre’s offensive posts but reinstate the right-wing influencer on the platform. Lucre currently has a monetized account on X with 1.6 million followers listed.

Tom Quisel, CEO of Musubi AI, which helps social networks and AI companies automate content moderation using AI, said it appeared xAI had failed to create even “entry-level layers of trust and security” in the Grok Imagine to X deployment.

Quisel said it would be easy for a company like xAI to have its model detect and block “an image involving children or partial nudity,” or to reject prompts for users to put the subject of a photo in sexually suggestive outfits.

The controversy has done nothing to harm X’s traffic.

According to Apptopia, which tracks mobile app trends, Grok’s daily downloads have increased 54% since January 2, while X’s daily downloads have jumped 25% over the past three days.

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