Overview
- The European Parliament, which voted Thursday, approved a ban on AI 'nudifier' tools by 569–45 with 23 abstentions, and the text now goes to negotiations with EU member states.
- Lawmakers also backed later start dates for parts of the AI Act, pushing high-risk system deadlines to December 2027 for stand‑alone tools and August 2028 for embedded ones, with watermarking moved to November 2026.
- The new ban defines nudifiers as AI that makes or alters intimate images to resemble a real, identifiable person without consent, and it exempts systems with effective safeguards that block such outputs.
- A Dutch court ordered xAI’s Grok to stop creating and distributing non‑consensual sexual images and set a €100,000 daily penalty capped at €10 million, also awarding €2.2 million in legal costs to the Dutch nonprofit that sued.
- Regulatory and legal pressure is widening as EU officials probe X and Grok under online content and data protection laws, and independent researchers estimate roughly 3 million sexualized images were generated in late December and early January, including tens of thousands that appeared to depict children.