PARIS — French authorities will investigate the proliferation of sexually explicit deepfakes generated by artificial intelligence platform Grok on X, the Paris prosecutor’s office told POLITICO.
French lawmakers Arthur Delaporte and Eric Bothorel contacted the prosecutor’s office on Jan. 2 after thousands of non-consensual sexually explicit deepfakes were generated by Grok and published on X.
“These facts have been added to the existing investigation into X,” the prosecutor’s office stated, noting that this offense is punishable by two years’ imprisonment and a €60,000 fine.
The two lawmakers confirmed to POLITICO that they had filed reports with the authorities.
For the past two days, hundreds of women and teenagers have reported that their photos published on social media have been “undressed” by Grok — the artificial intelligence integrated into the social network X — at the request of users. These AI-generated photo montages “violate the dignity of the people depicted,” argues Delaporte in his letter to the public prosecutor, seen by POLITICO.
When contacted by POLITICO, the French digital affairs office said three government ministers — Roland Lescure, economy and industry minister; Anne Le Hénanff, junior minister for artificial intelligence and digital affairs; and Aurore Bergé, equality minister — have reported “manifestly illegal content” to the public prosecutor and a government online surveillance platform Pharos, to “obtain its immediate removal.”
France’s High Commissioner for Children, Sarah El Haïry, said she was “outraged” by these practices.
The case will bolster the investigation already opened by the French cybercrime unit against X, which was expanded in November to include antisemitic and Holocaust denial statements disseminated by Grok.
When contacted by POLITICO, X did not respond at the time of publication.
A post by Grok on X in response to concerns about “extremely inappropriate” images of minors, said: “There are isolated cases where users prompted for and received AI images depicting minors in minimal clothing.”
“xAI has safeguards, but improvements are ongoing to block such requests entirely,” Grok said.
The European Commission did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
Eliza Gkritsi contributed to this story.