Recent concerns have been raised about the spread of illegal content, particularly manipulated sexually explicit images, which may include child sexual abuse materials. This issue highlights significant risks that have come to fruition, putting EU citizens in potential danger.

The European Commission has voiced alarm, stating that these risks “seem to have materialized, exposing citizens in the EU to serious harm.”

Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security, and Democracy, emphasized the gravity of the situation, saying, “Sexual deepfakes of women and children are a violent, unacceptable form of degradation.”

She further elaborated, “This investigation will ascertain whether X has fulfilled its legal duties as outlined by the Digital Services Act (DSA), or if it has disregarded the rights of European citizens—including women and children—as a mere byproduct of its service.”

Additionally, there remains ongoing concern from eSafety about the use of the generative AI system, Grok, on X. The platform’s potential to create content that could sexualize or exploit individuals, particularly children, remains a critical issue, as highlighted in their statement on January 9.

“While the number of reports eSafety has received remains small, eSafety has seen a recent increase from almost none to several reports over the past couple of weeks relating to the use of Grok to generate sexualised or exploitative imagery. 

“eSafety will use its powers, including removal notices, where appropriate and where material meets the relevant thresholds defined in the Online Safety Act.”

The commission said it had already taken enforcement action in 2025 over some “nudify” services used to create AI child sexual exploitation material.

The eSafety Commission has not confirmed whether it has received a response from X. 

About a week later, X owner Musk said he was aware of “literally zero” naked underage images generated by Grok.

“Obviously, Grok does not spontaneously generate images, it does so only according to user requests,” he said, in a post on X.

“When asked to generate images, it will refuse to produce anything illegal, as the operating principle for Grok is to obey the laws of any given country or state.

“There may be times when adversarial hacking of Grok prompts does something unexpected. If that happens, we fix the bug immediately.”

It also said it would stop allowing users to depict people in “bikinis, underwear or other revealing attire” but only in places where it’s illegal.

Tech website The Verge has since found it remains “extremely easy to undress women and edit them into sexualised poses using the X and Grok mobile apps or websites”.

The European Commission said its investigation could include sending more requests for information to X, conducting interviews or inspections and imposing interim measures.