Looks like Elon’s set to be hit with another fine from the EU Commission, this time over the misuse of Grok, and the chatbot’s capacity to produce offensive, potentially illegal content
Today, the EU Commission has announced a new investigation into X’s Grok AI chatbot, which many have been using to generate non-consensual nudes and sexualized images.
As per the EU Commission:
“The new investigation will assess whether the company properly assessed and mitigated risks associated with the deployment of Grok’s functionalities into X in the EU. This includes risks related to the dissemination of illegal content in the EU, such as manipulated sexually explicit images, including content that may amount to child sexual abuse material.”
X’s Grok chatbot had been producing thousands of sexually explicit images per day a few weeks back, before X moved to restrict its image generation capabilities, though not before X owner Elon Musk took a stand against making any changes at all, and pushed back against critics.
Why anyone would want to take a stand on that specific concern, I don’t know, but according to Elon, this was a free speech issue, claiming, essentially, that people should be able to generate non-consensual nudes of people, if they choose.
And now, the EU Commission will explore whether X violated the Digital Services Act (DSA), which could lead to significant fines for the company.
“These risks seem to have materialized, exposing citizens in the EU to serious harm. In light of this, the Commission will further investigate whether X complies with its DSA obligations to:
- Diligently assess and mitigate systemic risks, including of the dissemination of illegal content, negative effects in relation to gender-based violence, and serious negative consequences to physical and mental well-being stemming from deployments of Grok’s functionalities into its platform.
- Conduct and transmit to the Commission an ad hoc risk assessment report for Grok’s functionalities in the X service with a critical impact on X’s risk profile prior to their deployment.”
In addition to this, the EU Commission will also extend its ongoing proceedings against X to establish whether the company has properly assessed and mitigated all systemic risks, as defined in the DSA, associated with its recommender systems, “including the impact of its recently announced switch to a Grok-based recommender system.”
Yeah, it certainly sounds like X is going to get fined in Europe once again, which will likely trigger another crash-out from Musk, in which he’ll call upon his White House buddies for support in pushing back against EU rules.
Last month, the EU Commission fined X $US140 million for breaches of the DSA, which mostly relate to confusion caused by its paid verification offering. In response, Musk compared the EU Commission to the Nazi regime, and called for the U.S. to leave NATO in response, and for the abolishment of the entire EU framework.
So, yeah, not exactly a measured response.
Musk also called for support from the U.S. government in opposing EU regulation, with Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio joining in his criticisms, and labeling the penalty “an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments.”
As such, the groundwork has been established for a bigger push back from Musk, if X does indeed get fined. And given his propensity to use his public platform as his own court of opinion, it seems inevitable that this is headed for another major conflict, which could spark a response from the U.S. government.
But to be clear, all anyone ever called for in this case was for X to remove the capacity for Grok to produce offensive, non-consensual images. Given the way that AI tools work, outlawing this entirely could be difficult, but the xAI has since proved that it can at least move in that direction, and the fact that X didn’t look to limit such immediately, once reports of such misuse surfaced, doesn’t bode well for the company.
Is it a free speech issue?
Part of Musk’s push back was that other apps and tools can generate similar images, and yet they’re not coming under the same scrutiny as X. Musk’s view is that this is because X is “exposing the truth” through its free speech approach, and that’s why it’s being targeted, but all nudification and AI apps are under scrutiny for the same thing.
The difference is that none of them have the scale and reach of X, and none were being used to produce the scale of offensive images that X had been.
Either way, it’s another battle for X, which will likely prompt a new public spat when the findings are eventually handed down by the EU Commission.
