X was fined €120m after being found to have breached the DSA in a separate investigation last month.

The EU has launched a new investigation into X to probe whether the Elon Musk-owned social media site properly assessed and mitigated risks stemming with its in-platform AI chatbot Grok.

X’s latest brush-up against the EU came after the platform’s parent company xAI outfitted Grok with the ability to edit images late last month.

Users on the social media site quickly prompted the tool to undress people – generally women and children – in images and videos. Millions of such pieces of content were generated on X, finds a report by The New York Times.

Responding to the criticism, the social media platform limited Grok’s image-editing capabilities to just paid users around two weeks after the ‘nudify’ feature was first launched. However, the damage was already done.

Announcing the investigation yesterday (26 January), the Commission said that the feature may have exposed EU users to “serious harm”.

EU authorities will now investigate X’s compliance with the Digital Services Act (DSA), especially in relation to how the platform mitigates systemic risks, including the spread of illegal content, gender-based violence, as well as the negative consequences to users’ physical and mental well-being as a result of Grok.

X is liable to a fine of up to 6pc of its global annual turnover if it is found to have breached the DSA.

The EU has said that it closely collaborated with Coimisiún na Meán (CnaM) in preparation for the investigation. The Irish media regulator will be supporting the Commission with the probe.

“Sexual deepfakes of women and children are a violent, unacceptable form of degradation,” said Henna Virkkunen, the executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy.

“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.”

Alongside this, the EU is continuing on with a separate years-long investigation into X to assess if the platform mitigated risks stemming from its recommender systems, including the impact of the recently announced switch to a Grok-based recommender system.

The 2023 investigation also covered X’s use of deceptive design, the lack of advertising transparency and insufficient data access for researchers, for which the Commission fined the platform €120m last month. X de-activated EU’s ad account on the site just days later.

X’s updated Grok functionalities were criticised globally, with Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines temporarily banning the AI chatbot earlier this month. Malaysia and the Philippines restored access after to Grok after xAI said it had installed extra safety measures.

Meanwhile, UK’s media regulator Ofcom has also launched an investigation into X over concerns that Grok may have produced child sexual abuse material. And CnaM launched a separate inquiry into the platform last year to assess whether users are able to appeal X’s decisions on content moderation.

Despite the ongoing backlash X and Grok are facing, on 6 January, parent company xAI announced a $20bn Series E round with backing from the likes of Qatar Investment Authority, MGX, Nvidia and Cisco Investments.

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Elon Musk at Charlie Kirk’s memorial, September 2025. Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr (CC BY-SA 4.0)