Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) said on Tuesday it had opened a formal investigation into X's AI chatbot Grok over the processing of personal data and its potential to produce harmful sexualised images and video, including of children, Reuters reported. 

The DPC is the lead EU regulator for X because the U.S. company's European Union operations are based in Ireland. It can levy fines of up to 4% of a company's global revenue under the bloc's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The decision to begin the inquiry was notified to X on Monday, the DPC said in a statement and its purpose was to determine whether X had complied with its obligations under GDPR with regard to the personal data processed, according to Reuters.