LONDON

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Tuesday that his government will investigate X, Meta and TikTok for AI-generated child sexual abuse material to protect "the mental health, dignity and rights" of children.

The government will ask prosecutors to investigate social media companies to determine whether they have committed criminal offences by allowing their AI systems to generate and disseminate child sexual abuse material, he wrote on US social media company X.

"These platforms are attacking the mental health, dignity and rights of our sons and daughters," the Spanish premier noted. "The State cannot allow it. The impunity of the giants must end."

It came after Sanchez announced new steps in February to regulate social media platforms and strengthen protections for minors, saying digital spaces have enabled criminal activity, disinformation and harmful content.

He previously described social media as having "become a kind of Wild West in a failed state."

The European Commission launched an investigation last month into Elon Musk’s X and its chatbot Grok for its recommender systems under the Digital Services Act (DSA) because of sexualized imagery.

Following a series of investigations by European countries, including the UK and France, Irish authorities said Tuesday that it launched a new data protection investigation into Grok for sexualized deepfake images.