On Tuesday, French law enforcement officials raided the offices of Elon Musk's X as part of an investigation into "unlawful data extraction" and sensitive material generated by the social platform's Grok chatbot, according to the BBC.

What's happening?

In late December and early January, a controversy over explicit images generated by Grok, many of which reportedly depicted minors, emerged.

Although Grok's ability to generate such images wasn't new, Musk retweeted an image of himself in a bikini Dec. 31, inadvertently creating a trend. 

One third-party analysis jointly conducted by The New York Times and the Center for Countering Digital Hate conservatively estimated that Grok generated close to 2 million explicit images in a nine-day span.

The vast majority of images were generated without the consent of the individuals depicted, causing significant distress. However, Grok's ability and apparent lack of guardrails to create such images featuring children prompted far greater alarm.

According to the Times, a cybercrime unit raided X's offices in France as part of an investigation into the presence of illegal material involving minors on the platform, as well as "producing content denying crimes against humanity."

The BBC reported that the United Kingdom's Information Commissioner's Office announced it was investigating Grok's "potential to produce harmful sexualized image and video content" on X.

In a statement, the ICO's executive director for regulatory risk and innovation, William Malcolm, outlined the purpose of its joint investigation with British regulatory body Ofcom.

"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," Malcolm explained, per BBC.

Why is this concerning?

Despite worldwide controversy over Grok's ability to generate explicit images with few if any guardrails, X hasn't meaningfully addressed the problem.

What's the most you'd pay per month to put solar panels on your roof if there was no down payment? $200 or more 💰 $100 💸 $30 💵 I'd only do it if someone else paid for it 😎 Click your choice to see results and speak your mind.

Musk framed the investigation as a "political attack" in a post on X, and former X CEO Linda Yaccarino bizarrely accused authorities of acting on "a political vendetta against Americans."

"To be clear: they are lying," Yaccarino added, without elaborating on what constituted "lying."

Grok caused seemingly endless controversy in 2025, from regurgitating conspiracy theories unprompted and generating antisemitic replies to requesting lewd images from a 12-year-old.

More broadly, the subject of AI tools like Grok and the data centers that power them became a hot-button issue last year.

As AI integration spiked, the energy demand created led to exorbitant electric bills nationwide. In the summer, the Department of Energy warned that grid capacity was insufficient to support escalating demand, and that blackouts could increase a hundredfold by 2023 as a result.

Between Grok's stumbles and often underwhelming AI functionality, questions about whether the technology would ever offset its social harms escalated.

What's being done about it?

Per the BBC, Ofcom described its investigation into X as a "matter of urgency" in a statement Tuesday.

In January, Indonesia and Malaysia moved to block X in their countries due to the controversy.

Get TCD's free newsletters for easy tips to save more, waste less, and make smarter choices — and earn up to $5,000 toward clean upgrades in TCD's exclusive Rewards Club.