February 17, 2026 | 08:41 pm
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Ireland's data protection watchdog launched an investigation into Elon Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, on Tuesday, in the latest step the European Union has taken in response to sexualized deepfake images.
The "large-scale inquiry" is on behalf of the European Union and will probe whether the AI tool breached the bloc's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) said in a statement.
The EU is also running its own investigation into Grok and the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, under the powers of the Digital Services Act (DSA), which sets out rights and protections for EU citizens.
Why is Ireland investigating Elon Musk's X?
Ireland is taking the lead on the investigation since X's European operations are headquartered in Dublin.
As the lead authority for X in the EU, the DPC will examine the company's compliance with "some of their fundamental obligations under the GDPR in relation to the matters at hand," DPC Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle said in the statement.
The DPC said it had notified the Elon Musk-owned company on Monday. X is yet to respond to this latest probe.
Violations can result in hefty fines of up to 4 percent of a company's total global revenue.
The separate EU probe, which was launched in late January, can result in fines of 6 percent of global revenues.
The law requires online giants such as X to proactively tackle illegal and harmful online content.
Why is Grok under fire?
An analysis of over 20,000 Grok-generated images, published by Paris-based non-profit AI Forensics in January, found that more than half the images showed individuals in "minimal attire."
Most of these individuals were women and 2 percent appeared to be minors.
Several governments put pressure on xAI to modify Grok after its so-called "Spicy Mode" allowed users to create sexually explicit images with simple prompts such as "remove her clothes" or "put her in underwear."
Malaysia and Indonesia went as far as blocking the chatbot completely.
In response, X announced new restrictions on the chatbot, preventing it from undressing images of real people and allowing only paid users to use the image-creation function.
EU-U.S. tensions over the enforcement of tech rules
The European Union's strong response to the sexual deepfakes has added another layer to tensions between the bloc and the U.S., a relationship already under stress over President Donald Trump's trade tariffs and conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine.
Ireland has moved to investigate X despite repeated U.S. threats of retaliation against the enforcement of tech rules.
The Trump administration has accused the EU of targeting American companies and restricting free speech. Musk is an ally of the president, having spent billions to fund Trump's reelection.
The Irish watchdog has been investigating X's use of certain personal data to train its AI models since last year.
Read: Why French Prosecutors Raided Elon Musk's X Offices in France
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