{"id":10833,"date":"2026-01-26T23:09:25","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T23:09:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/eu-opens-formal-probe-into-musks-xai-over-grok-deepfakes\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T23:09:25","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T23:09:25","slug":"eu-opens-formal-probe-into-musks-xai-over-grok-deepfakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/eu-opens-formal-probe-into-musks-xai-over-grok-deepfakes\/","title":{"rendered":"EU opens formal probe into Musk\u2019s xAI over Grok deepfakes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__content-sign-up-topic-description o3-type-body-base\"><span>Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"article__content-sign-up-iframe close\" scrolling=\"no\" id=\"signUpIframe\" data-prev-url=\"\/register\/in-article-sign-up?ft-content-uuid=f5ed0160-7098-4e63-88e5-8b3f70499b02\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div id=\"article-body\">\n<p>The EU has launched a formal investigation into Elon Musk\u2019s xAI following a public outcry over how its Grok chatbot spread sexualised images of women and children.<\/p>\n<p>The billionaire entrepreneur has come under scrutiny from regulators around the world this month after people began using Grok to generate deepfakes of people without consent. The images were posted on the X social network as well as the separate Grok app, both of which are run by xAI.<strong><br \/><\/strong><br \/>The probe, announced on Monday under the EU\u2019s Digital Services Act, will assess if xAI tried to mitigate the risks of deploying Grok\u2019s tools on X and the proliferation of content that \u201cmay amount to child sexual abuse material\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNon-consensual sexual deepfakes of women and children are a violent, unacceptable form of degradation,\u201d the EU\u2019s tech chief Henna Virkkunen said. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith this investigation, we will determine whether X has met its legal obligations under the DSA, or whether it treated rights of European citizens \u2014 including those of women and children \u2014 as collateral damage of its service.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If the company is found to be in breach of the rules, the bloc can impose fines worth up to 6 per cent of the worldwide annual turnover. An EU official said there will be no interim measures during the investigation.<\/p>\n<p>The European probe comes after UK media regulator Ofcom opened a formal investigation into Grok, while Malaysia and Indonesia have banned the chatbot altogether.<\/p>\n<p>Following the backlash, xAI restricted the use of Grok to paying subscribers and said it has \u201cimplemented technological measures\u201d to limit Grok from generating certain sexualised images.<\/p>\n<p>Musk has also said \u201canyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content\u201d.<\/p>\n<aside aria-labelledby=\"aside-label\" class=\"n-content-recommended--single-story n-content-recommended--inset\" data-component=\"recommended\">\n<p class=\"n-content-recommended__title o3-type-body-highlight\">Recommended<\/p>\n<div class=\"o-teaser o-teaser--article o-teaser--small o-teaser--stacked o-teaser--has-image js-teaser\" data-id=\"117af7cc-3fe6-4292-a706-7204b82bb8dc\">\n<div class=\"o-teaser__image-container js-teaser-image-container\">\n<div class=\"o-teaser__image-placeholder\" style=\"aspect-ratio:2493\/1402\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"o-teaser__image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/__origami\/service\/image\/v2\/images\/raw\/https%3A%2F%2Fimages.ft.com%2Fv3%2Fimage%2Fraw%2Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fd1e00ek4ebabms.cloudfront.net%252Fproduction%252Faab04495-37f2-41a7-af72-92e106a6be27.jpg%3Fsource%3Dnext-article%26fit%3Dscale-down%26quality%3Dhighest%26width%3D700%26dpr%3D1?source=next&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;dpr=2&amp;width=240\" alt=\"Elon Musk in a suit appears in front of the XAI and Grok logos on a black background with a red border.\"\/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>An EU official said that \u201cwith 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\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The company, which acquired Musk\u2019s social media site X last year, has designed its AI products to have fewer content \u201cguardrails\u201d than competitors such as OpenAI and Google. Musk called its Grok model \u201cmaximally truth-seeking\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The commission fined X \u20ac120mn in December last year for breaching its regulations for transparency, providing insufficient access to data and the deceptive design of its blue ticks for verified accounts. <\/p>\n<p>The fine was criticised by Musk and the US government, with the Trump administration claiming the EU was unfairly targeting American groups and infringing freedom of speech principles championed by the Maga movement.<\/p>\n<p>X did not immediately reply to a request for comment. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The EU has launched a formal investigation into Elon Musk\u2019s xAI following a public outcry over how its Grok chatbot spread sexualised images of women and children. The billionaire entrepreneur has come under scrutiny from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_daextam_enable_autolinks":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/9dd01490-504c-4584-b6f5-225c63763404.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}