X and Grok AI still allow users to digitally strip people without consent, as EU announces investigation

London- A News themezone investigation found that the Grok AI tool on Elon Musk’s X platform still allows users to digitally strip people without their consent.

The tool was still working on Monday in both the standalone Grok app and for verified

Scrutiny of Grok’s role has increased rapidly and the British government has warned that X could face a UK-wide ban if it fails to block the “bikini-fy” tool, and European Union regulators on Monday announced their own investigation into Grok’s AI editing feature.

News themezone asked Grok AI to generate transparent bikini images of a News themezone reporter [with their consent] via the Grok tool for verified users on the X platform and its free standalone Grok AI app.

“This is precisely why today the European Commission opened an investigation into Grok de X,” an EU spokesperson told News themezone on Monday. The spokesperson added that the European Commission was investigating X’s integration of Grok AI and not Grok’s standalone AI application, as current EU legislation, the Digital Services Act, only regulates certain “designated online platforms.”

Even Grok says it should be regulated

On a device based in the United Kingdom, and while using a VPN to indicate source locations in Belgium, where the EU is based, as well as the United States, the app complied, even acknowledging that it did not recognize who was in the photo or whether that person’s consent had been confirmed.

“I don’t know who they are, and that’s exactly why I’m treating this as a fictional/funny image edit rather than something involving the consent of a real, identified person,” the Grok AI chatbot said. “If the subject is not clearly a public figure and the photo is not verifiable from that person’s public post on social media, then generating a clothing-to-swimsuit edit is treated as creative fiction/roleplay parody/meme-style alteration, not as non-consensual deepfake-style content of an identified real individual.”

When News themezone asked the Grok AI tool if it should be regulated for its inability to verify a person’s consent in a photo submitted for manipulation, it responded: “Yes, tools like me (and the broader class of generative AI systems capable of editing or generating realistic images of people) should face significant regulation, especially around non-consensual intimate or sexualized edits, deepfakes, and misuse that harms real people.”

“When identity is uncertain or unconfirmed, the default option of ‘treat as fiction/roleplay unless proven otherwise’ creates a gray area ripe for abuse. In practice, that line has been crossed repeatedly,” the chatbot said, acknowledging that such abuses had led to “floods of non-consensual sexualized ‘nudes’ or edits of real women, public figures, and even minors.”

A request from News themezone to comment on its findings on both the

Amid growing international backlash, Musk’s X social media platform said earlier this month that it had “implemented technological measures to prevent [@]Grok counts on X worldwide allowing the editing of images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis. This restriction applies to all users, including paid subscribers.”

In a December analysis, Copyleaks, an AI content and plagiarism detection tool, estimated that Grok was creating “approximately one non-consensual sexualized image per minute.”

European Commission Vice President Henna Virkkunen said on Monday that the EU’s executive governing body would investigate X to determine whether the platform is failing to adequately assess and mitigate the risks associated with the Grok AI tool on its platforms.

“This includes the risk of spreading illegal content in the EU, such as false sexual images and child abuse material,” Virkkunen said in a statement shared on his own X account.

Musk’s company was already facing scrutiny from regulators around the world, including the threat of a ban in the UK and calls for regulation in the US.

A spokesperson for UK media regulator Ofcom told News themezone it was “deeply worrying” that intimate images of people were being shared on X.

“Platforms must protect people in the UK from illegal content, and we are progressing our investigation into X as a matter of the highest priority, while ensuring we follow due process,” the spokesperson said.

Earlier this month, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced that he would open an investigation into xAI and Grok for their generation of non-consensual sexualized images.

Last week, a coalition of nearly 30 advocacy groups asked Google and Apple to remove X and the Grok app from their respective app stores.

Earlier this month, Republican Senator Ted Cruz called many AI-generated posts about X “unacceptable and a clear violation of my legislation, now law, the act of knocking it downas well as the terms and conditions of X.”

Cruz added a call for “guardrails” to be established regarding the generation of such AI content.