Canada’s privacy watchdog is expanding its investigation into Elon Musk’s X Corporation in light of the company allowing its AI chatbot to generate sexualized images of women and children.
On Thursday, the office announced that the investigation would grow to include xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence wing behind the publicly-available AI chatbot Grok.
Governments around the world have threatened investigations or regulatory action over Grok’s production of sexualized images of people, particularly women, and users’ requests to produce child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
Indonesia and Malaysia both banned Grok last week, while other countries and the European Commission have threatened investigations that could result in significant fines for the U.S.-based social media company.
Canada’s Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne’s office was already investigating whether X and its related companies were complying with Canadian privacy law. That initial probe, launched in February 2025, was examining how X collected, used and disclosed Canadians’ personal information to train AI models.
Grok’s production of sexualized images blew up in late December and prompted increasingly vocal outrage from governments and regulators in early January. Users could simply ask the AI chatbot to produce images of real people in sexualized positions or scantily clad, such as in swimwear.
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The images are commonly referred to as “deepfakes,” altering the likeness of real people to put them in fake contexts or performing actions they haven’t, in reality, done.
“I (am) not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok. Literally zero,” Musk posted on the social media platform Wedneday morning.
“Obviously, Grok does not spontaneously generate images, it does so only according to user requests,” Musk added, claiming Grok will refuse to produce anything illegal.
The New York Times reported Thursday that X claimed it was blocking Grok from producing sexualized or naked images of real people on its platform. The move came after California’s attorney general announced that the state would investigate xAI over the production of sexualized images of women and children.
As of Thursday, X has faced no repercussions from the Canadian government over the scandal.
Dufresne’s office said it expanded its current investigation on Jan. 14 “following growing concern and multiple media reports about the platform.”
“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,” a statement from the privacy watchdog’s office read.
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