BRUSSELS

The European Commission on Tuesday called on Elon Musk-owned social media platform X to implement effective measures to protect EU citizens from sexual deepfakes and other harmful content on its platform.

"We're still in that window where … now the ball is in their (X’s) court, and … we strongly encourage them to … come up with appropriate measures to settle the case, because we want to settle cases for the benefit of our citizens," commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier told reporters in Brussels.

This came amid controversy surrounding Grok, the AI chatbot developed by xAI and integrated into X, after an image-generation feature added last year enabled the creation of sexually explicit imagery.

Regnier said that X has 60 to 90 days to remedy the situation.

Under the EU's digital and AI rulebooks, platforms can face heavy penalties or enforcement measures if they fail to prevent the spread of illegal content.

Regnier emphasized that while the owner of X has announced changes to the platform, these remain very limited.

"We now need to see how effective they are or not. They have potentially reduced the harm that is caused to EU citizens, but we want here proper mitigation measures that protect all citizens in the European Union," he said.

He said the European Commission has already received internal documents from X and is reviewing them as part of an ongoing investigation that also covers illegal content, including child sexual abuse material and non-consensual deepfakes of women.

"We have a number of steps that can be taken under our enforcement toolbox ... Once we are ready with the assessment, we will decide if further steps are needed or not," he added.

Launched in 2023, Grok is available through X and allows users to ask questions and generate content.