The Privacy Commissioner of Canada announced on Thursday he is expanding an investigation into X regarding its chatbot Grok, created by xAI (X.AI), being used to generate sexualized images of women and children without their consent.
Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne initially launched an investigation into X, which is run by Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, last February, when his office received its first complaint on the matter.
The investigation will try to determine if X and xAI has violated Canada’s federal privacy law, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.
“More specifically, the expanded investigations will consider whether X Corp. and xAI have obtained valid consent from individuals for the collection, use, and disclosure of their personal information to create deepfakes, including explicit content, via Grok and whether the companies have collected, used, and disclosed this information in accordance with the Act,” according to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
“The use of personal information without consent to create deepfakes, including intimate images, is a growing phenomenon that poses serious risks to individuals’ fundamental right to privacy,” Dufresne said. “I have decided to expand my investigation to address this issue given its importance and the potential serious harms that it may cause to Canadians.”
This expanded probe follows a host of similar investigations launched recently around the globe.
On Wednesday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced an investigation to determine if xAI has violated the law by allowing Grok to generate these images. Earlier this month, a group of U.S. senators asked Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG)(GOOGL) to remove Grok and X apps from their digital stores.
The U.K. has also initiated an investigation into X due to “deeply concerning reports of the Grok AI chatbot account on X being used to create and share undressed images of people.”
Malaysia’s communications regulator said it will take legal action against X and xAI over the issue as well.
However, Musk and xAI said they have already addressed the problem.
“We now geoblock the ability of all users to generate images of real people in bikinis, underwear, and similar attire via the Grok account and in Grok in X in those jurisdictions where it’s illegal,” xAI posted on Wednesday.
“When asked to generate images, it will refuse to produce anything illegal, as the operating principle for Grok is to obey the laws of any given country or state,” Musk said. “There may be times when adversarial hacking of Grok prompts does something unexpected. If that happens, we fix the bug immediately.”