Tuesday’s move marks the latest escalation in Sánchez’s increasingly personal confrontation with major technology companies and their billionaire owners — a campaign that has included regulatory threats, public clashes with Elon Musk and Pavel Durov, and broader calls in Madrid for tighter platform controls.
In a letter to the Public Prosecutor’s Office first reported by Spanish newspaper El País, Sánchez’s government cites the abundance of AI-generated child sexual abuse material on social media platforms and requests an investigation be launched to determine if their operators have “criminal liability … due to the control they exert over content.”
Sánchez also argued the investigation request is prompted by a new technical report jointly prepared by Spain’s Ministries of the Presidency, Digital Transformation, and Youth, which depicts the digital environment as a place “characterized by impunity and tolerance of criminal practices that jeopardize the privacy, image, and freedom of minors.”
Spain’s constitutional separation of powers means that the executive cannot order a criminal probe be launched. The decision to investigate the tech giants will be up to Attorney General Teresa Peramato, who is required to seek the advice of the Board of Prosecutors of the country’s Supreme Court before taking further action.
Sánchez’s request that the tech giants be the subject of a criminal investigation comes just two weeks after French authorities raided X’s headquarters in Paris as part of a probe looking into the proliferation of sexually explicit deepfakes generated by the platform’s Grok AI chatbot. The European Commission has also opened an investigation into X for the same reason, and is exploring a wider ban on AI-powered apps that undress people online.
Earlier this month, the Spanish leader announced he would ban children under the age of 16 from accessing social media. He is also proposing tech giant executives be held criminally accountable for repeat violations that take place on their platforms, and for algorithm manipulation to be made a crime.
Spain’s Youth Minister Sira Rego has floated banning X outright, while Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz said earlier this month she had left the platform, arguing that remaining users were “feeding the politics of hatred” and urging sweeping regulation of large U.S. tech firms.
Aitor Hernández-Morales contributed to this report.