The accelerating month-long fury over xAI’s Grok chabot’s feature that lets X users alter any images posted to the social network – a feature that has led to millions of nonconsensual and sexualized images of women and children – escalated this week when French authorities searched X’s offices in Paris and summoned Elon Musk to appear for questioning.

At the same time, the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) announced that it’s opened formal investigations into X and xAI due to the new Grok tool and the sexualized images and videos that it is generating.

In a statement, William Malcolm, the ICO’s executive director of regulatory risk and innovation, said “the reports about Grok raise deeply troubling questions about how people’s personal data has been used to generate intimate or sexualised images without their knowledge or consent, and whether the necessary safeguards were put in place to prevent this. Losing control of personal data in this way can cause immediate and significant harm. This is particularly the case where children are involved.”

The feature introduced to Grok in late December 2025 allows X users to edit posted images immediately and without the consent of the people who initially post them. Soon after, such sexualized and intimate deepfake images of people – particularly women and minors – began appearing on X, touching off a far-reaching firestorm of criticism that included governments officials and regulatory agencies, advocacy groups, and individuals.

In-mid January, Musk announced the controversial feature would be available only to paying subscribers on X and that guardrails, such as changing Grok responses to some prompts, were implemented, with Musk saying it would stem the posting of the controversial images. However, the guardrails are easily bypassed, according to numerous reports, and while it may have slowed the number of such images, it didn’t eliminate them.

France Takes Action

Now European governments are taking next steps. According to NBC News, the search of X’s Paris office was conducted by a prosecutor’s cybercrime unit, with both the distribution of the sexualized deepfakes and the Holocaust denial content on X as its targets. The prosecutor’s office said it was investigating a range of criminal offenses related to child pornography, violations of personal rights, and the denial of “crimes against humanity.”

The voluntary summons to come to France the week of April 20 to be questions were sent out to Musk and former X CEO Linda Yaccarino. According to NBC News, neither has commented on the office raid or summonses, though X executives last year said investigations by French authorities in regard to algorithm manipulation on the social media platform were part of a “political agenda” to “restrict free speech.”

Fierce Global Response

The mounting global response to Grok, X, and Musk over the deepfake controversy suggests otherwise.  The European Union – which already has had an unrelated investigation into X since 2023 – in January launched its own investigation against the social media platform over the deepfake feature, with the probe coming under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA).

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

Last month, the U.S. Senate passed the DEFIANCE Act that would allow victims to sue the creators of nonconsensual sexually explicit deepfakes.

Taking to the Courts

There have been lawsuits filed, including one by the mother of one of his children, who said the chatbot generated sexually suggestive images of her without her consent. A class action lawsuit was in federal court in California last month.

“AI companies like xAI are familiar with these dangers to women and girls that their technology enables,” the lawsuit reads. “Most companies have taken action to implement guardrails to prevent their technology from being used to create sexual and revealing deepfakes of nonconsenting women. xAI, however, has chosen instead to capitalize on the internet’s seemingly insatiable appetite for humiliating non-consensual sexual images.”

The lawsuit adds that Grok not only doesn’t conform with industry standards, it is touting the capability, including with its “spicy” model used to produce the nonconsensual deepfakes.

Organizations are Adding Pressure

Advocacy groups have been outspoken about the deepfakes, with the Center for Countering Digital Hate writing on January 22 that an analysis of a sample of images indicates that the Grok tool has been used to generate about 3 million sexualized images, including 23,000 “that appear to depict children.”

Some also are pushing tech companies that support the Grok chatbot and X – including those whose infrastructure they run on – to act. In letters to Google’s Sundar Pichai and Apple’s Tim Cook on January 14, 28 organizations urged the CEOs to ban Grok from their online stores, saying the “content that is both a criminal offense and in direct violation of” the app stores’ guidelines.

Google and Apple not only are enabling such offenses, but profiting from it, they wrote.