The European Commission has opened an investigation into X, Elon Musk’s social media platform, and the AI chatbot Grok over the alleged creation of sexually explicit deepfake images of women and children. Musk said previously that he had seen “literally zero” evidence that Grok had created nude images of children. “Sexual deepfakes of women and children are a violent, unacceptable form of degradation,” Henna Virkkunen, the executive vice president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy at the European Commission, said in a statement. The commission also said it had extended a separate probe into X of its recommendations algorithm. Opened in 2023, that probe has so far resulted in a 120 million euro (then-$140 million) fine in December for breaches of the transparency requirements. Both probes fall under the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which regulates technology companies in the bloc. If the commission finds against them, Musk’s companies could face large fines and other enforcement actions. (…) On January 14, Musk addressed some of the criticism about Grok’s alleged creation of nude images of children and women. He wrote on X, “I not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok. Literally zero.” “Obviously, Grok does not spontaneously generate images, it does so only according to user requests,” Musk added. He continued: “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.”
via newsweek: Elon Musk’s X, Grok Under New Investigation: ‘Violent, Unacceptable’
siehe auch: EU launches formal investigation of xAI over Grok’s sexualized deepfakes Elon Musk’s company faces fines of up to 6 percent of its daily turnover. The EU has launched a formal investigation into Elon Musk’s xAI following a public outcry over how its Grok chatbot spread sexualized images of women and children. 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. The probe, announced on Monday under the EU’s Digital Services Act, will assess if xAI tried to mitigate the risks of deploying Grok’s tools on X and the proliferation of content that “may amount to child sexual abuse material.” “Non-consensual sexual deepfakes of women and children are a violent, unacceptable form of degradation,” the EU’s 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.” If the company is found to be in breach of the rules, the bloc can impose fines worth up to 6 percent of the worldwide annual turnover. An EU official said there will be no interim measures during the investigation. The European probe comes after UK media regulator Ofcom opened a formal investigation into Grok, while Malaysia and Indonesia have banned the chatbot altogether. Following the backlash, xAI restricted the use of Grok to paying subscribers and said it has “implemented technological measures” to limit Grok from generating certain sexualized images. Musk has also said “anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.” An EU official said that “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.”