EU confronts X over Grok chatbot’s pedophilic content

The European Commission has ordered Elon Musk’s platform to keep all internal documents related to the AI model

The European Commission has indicated it may investigate Grok, the AI chatbot within Elon Musk’s social media platform X, over reports it creates pedophilic content.

The Commission has ordered X to retain all internal documents and data relating to the chatbot until the end of 2026, the bloc’s tech spokesperson, Thomas Regnier, told journalists on Thursday.

“We have witnessed GROK generating anti-Semitic content and more recently sexual imagery of children. This is illegal. This goes against Europe’s values and our fundamental rights,” he said. He stressed that the platform must not delete internal documents because the Commission has “doubts” about X’s compliance with EU law and needs to preserve them.

xAI’s Acceptable Use Policy prohibits depicting persons in a pornographic manner and the sexualization of children. However, in a recent “digital undressing” trend, users have publicly tagged the bot in a post and commanded it to edit photos. Prompts like “put her in a bikini” led Grok to generate altered images, placing real women and girls who had never consented in minimal clothing or sexually explicit poses.

The British government has called on X to urgently deal with the issue, while French cabinet ministers have reported the content to prosecutors. Grok has blamed lapses in safeguards and said improvements are being made.

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The preservation order is the latest step in the dispute between the EU and Musk’s platform. In December, Brussels fined X €120 million (about $140 million) under the Digital Services Act (DSA) for misleading users through changes to its blue checkmark verification system. Musk dismissed the fine as politically motivated.

The EU and the US have butted heads over technology regulation imposed by laws like the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and DSA, which have led to significant fines against American companies. While Brussels views these regulations as necessary to ensure fair competition and protect consumers, Washington has labeled them discriminatory “non-tariff attacks” on American business.