Ireland: Ireland on Tuesday opened a new data protection investigation into Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok for sexualized deepfake images, according to a statement from the country's Data Protection Commission.

According to Anadolu Agency, the Data Protection Commission (DPC) has announced an inquiry into X Internet Unlimited Company (XIUC) under section 110 of the Data Protection Act 2018. This inquiry addresses the potential creation and dissemination of harmful, non-consensual intimate and/or sexualized images involving EU/EEA data subjects, including children, utilizing generative artificial intelligence functionality linked with the Grok large language model on the X platform.

Britain's data protection watchdog has also initiated a formal investigation into Elon Musk's X and xAI companies. This follows allegations that the Grok AI tool produced indecent deepfakes without consent, as stated by the Information Commissioner's Office. Reports indicate that Grok was utilized to generate non-consensual sexual imagery of individuals, including children.

In late January, the European Union launched its own investigation into Grok and X's recommender systems under the Digital Services Act (DSA) due to concerns over sexualized imagery. The European Commission has initiated a new formal investigation against X under the DSA and has extended an ongoing investigation from December 2023 into X's compliance with its recommender systems risk management obligations.

X's AI chatbot Grok has faced criticism following a social media trend where users prompt Grok to create or modify images of individuals in explicit portrayals without consent. Elon Musk, whose xAI developed Grok, stated on January 3 that users requesting the generation of illegal content would be treated as if they had uploaded illegal material themselves.