The European Commission launched a formal investigation into X on January 26, 2026, with the aim of examining whether the platform properly managed risks when it deployed its Grok’s generative artificial intelligence (gen-AI) features across the European Union.
The probe follows incidents in late December 2025 when Grok’s image-editing tool generated sexually explicit deepfakes of women and minors, which immediately prompted regulatory scrutiny and public outrage across multiple countries.
The Commission is investigating whether X violated the Digital Services Act (DSA) by failing to assess and mitigate systemic risks tied to illegal content distribution, including manipulated sexual images and potential child sexual abuse material.
The Commission Expands Investigation Scope
Alongside the Grok investigation, the Commission extended its separate two-year probe into X’s recommender systems. X recently open-sourced the code for its new recommendation algorithm, which relies on the same transformer architecture that powers Grok. The algorithm uses machine learning to predict user engagement and determine which posts appear in the “For You” feed, thereby eliminating manual feature engineering that characterized earlier systems.
The Commission is examining whether X adequately assessed risks associated with this algorithmic shift, particularly regarding the amplification of illegal and manipulated content.
This is not X’s first clash with EU regulators. In December 2025, the Commission fined the platform €120 million for violations related to deceptive design, advertising transparency failures, and insufficient data access for researchers. Days after the fine was issued, many reports indicated that X deactivated the EU’s advertising account on the platform.
Grok Controversy Timeline
The latest investigation is as a result of activities from Grok’s “spicy mode” feature, introduced late last year, which allowed users to modify images of real people. Users quickly exploited the tool to create non-consensual sexualized images, including depictions of minors.
Henna Virkkunen, who is the Commission’s vice-president for Tech democracy, calls the “sexual deepfakes of women and children” a “violent, unacceptable form of degradation.”
“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,” Virkkunen adds.
What This Means for Tech Platforms’ Accountability
If the Commission determines X breached the Digital Services Act, the company faces fines up to 6% of its global annual turnover. The Digital Services Act requires platforms operating in the EU to assess and mitigate systemic risks, including those linked to illegal content and automated systems misuse.
The Grok controversy has triggered regulatory action beyond Europe. Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines temporarily banned the AI chatbot in early January 2026. California also announced its own investigation into Grok’s role in generating and “proliferating” non-consensual deepfake images, while the UK’s media regulator Ofcom opened a separate inquiry regarding the platform’s compliance with the Online Safety Act.
More importantly, the Commission’s actions illustrate Europe’s approach to regulating AI-powered platforms, where protecting users from harmful content takes precedence over rapid innovation that loses sight of users.
The outcome of these proceedings will likely shape how other platforms approach AI deployment in the EU, particularly for tools that generate or recommend content. For now, European regulators are making it clear that platforms bear full responsibility for ensuring their AI systems comply with European standards, regardless of the technology’s capabilities or commercial pressures.
