The American advocacy powerhouse supports X’s legal fight against EU regulations, aligning itself with a company under global scrutiny for generating explicit AI deepfakes
Alliance Defending Freedom International (ADFI), which claims to be a pro-family organization, has emerged as an ally of Elon Musk in X’s legal fight against a €120 million fine imposed by the European Commission under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). Its support comes as Grok, X’s artificial intelligence chatbot, faces an international scandal over the creation of sexualized AI-generated content, including images of minors.
On February 20, ADFI announced in a press release that X is “challenging” the sanction before the General Court of the European Union with its support, an escalation in the tense transatlantic dispute over the European tech platform rules.
The fine, imposed in December 2025, was the first under the DSA. The European Commission based its decision on three alleged violations: deceptive changes to the platform’s blue checkmark system, limited access to data for researchers, and deficiencies in its advertising repository.
In response to the decision, ADFI’s Senior Counsel for Europe Adina Portaru, said: “X is being targeted by the European Commission because it is a free speech platform. Social media platforms are today’s public square, and the DSA threatens speech in that public square.”
ADFI posted about X’s appeal of the European Commission’s decision. (Source: X).
The DSA requires social media platforms to remove content that infringes the laws of EU member states, and makes social media algorithms more transparent to reduce the potential for spreading disinformation. Under the European regulations, tech companies are also required to share more information with researchers and the public.
ADFI and members of the Trump administration have criticized these safeguards as censorship, framing them as assaults on free speech and religious freedom. In practice, what they claim as censorship is material that targets hate and disinformation at specific communities, especially LGBTQ+ people and migrants. And now ADFI is backing a site whose AI has produced sexualized images of children.
A Contradiction in ADF’s Agenda
Even though the scale of the controversy surrounding Grok was already significant by the time ADFI decided to support Musk against the EU, the group chose to back the platform. According to an estimate by The New York Times and the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), Grok generated at least 1.8 million sexualized images of women. After analyzing 20,000 images produced by Musk’s AI between December 29 and January 8, CCDH identified at least 101 sexualized images of children.
The UK-based Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) told The Guardian that its analysts had “discovered criminal imagery of children aged between 11 and 13 which appears to have been created” using Grok.
The alliance among the American legal powerhouse and Musk exposes a striking contradiction. ADFI portrays itself as a Christian legal group committed to protecting families, women and children, and yet it is supporting a tech platform facing scrutiny over Grok-generated sexualized content.
This position clashes with other pillars of the organization’s stated agenda. ADFI argues on its website that the group “advocate[s] for laws that protect women and children from exploitation through the practice of surrogacy and other emergent bioethical trends.”
Beyond this case, Alliance Defending Freedom, and its overseas arm, ADFI, has campaigned for policies that would strip rights from women. This includes efforts to eliminate access to contraception and abortion. The organization has also promoted the criminalization of sexual acts among consenting LGBTQ+ individuals, among other far-right policies.
ADFI’s legal support for Musk comes as Grok faces growing international scrutiny. The European Commission, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, and Britain’s media regulator Ofcom have opened investigations into whether Grok enabled the distribution of sexualized AI-generated deepfakes. Meanwhile, Canada’s privacy watchdog has expanded an existing investigation into X following the Grok controversy.
Global Investigations Into Grok’s AI Controversy
French authorities have also taken action. On February 3, police raided X’s Paris offices as part of an ongoing investigation into suspected abuse of algorithms and fraudulent data extraction, which the prosecutor’s office said it had widened to cover complaints about Grok.
Since Trump returned to the White House, American tech companies have found an ally in the U.S. government in their opposition to the DSA. Speaking at the Paris AI Summit in February 2025, Vice President JD Vance criticized European regulation, arguing that U.S. innovators are forced to “deal with onerous international rules.”
“Many of our most productive tech companies are forced to deal with the EU’s Digital Services Act and the massive regulations it created about taking down content and policing so-called misinformation,” Vance said.
From the State Department, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah B. Rogers has repeatedly characterized the DSA as a form of censorship. She argues that this alleged form of speech restriction is spreading across the continent.
The Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee tweeted about Musk’s appeal. (Source: X).
As part of her campaign against the DSA, Rogers is developing an online portal that, according to Reuters, would allow users in Europe and elsewhere to access material prohibited by national authorities, including alleged hate speech and terrorist propaganda.
ADFI has criticized the EU law on both sides of the Atlantic, warning that it “risks censoring global speech.” The organization has advanced this argument in panel discussions, hearings, and public advocacy efforts.
In September, Lorcán Price, Legal Counsel with ADFI, testified before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee arguing that “under the DSA, what happens in Europe won’t stay in Europe.” Price added: “The internet is global. If American policymakers don’t push back against the DSA model, the same speech restrictions now emerging in Europe will be imported here.”
ADFI has chosen to defend X even as it produces sexualized images of minors and fight a law designed to hold it accountable for hate speech and disinformation. For an organization that claims to protect children and family values, the timing reveals a deep contradiction between its rhetoric and its alliances.
In a statement sent to GPAHE after publication, an ADF International spokesman said: “ADF International is a non-politically partisan legal advocacy organization with expertise in international law, which defends free speech and other fundamental freedoms. All our advocacy is fully in line with the rights and freedoms enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“There is no contradiction in our support for X’s landmark legal challenge against the European Commission. Of course, all children should be protected from exploitation online and we fully support legislation to that end.
“However, the DSA goes far beyond this and uses ‘child protection’ as a Trojan Horse for its true aim: the global mass censorship of views disfavoured by the Commission. We are proud to stand alongside X in defence of the fundamental human right of freedom of expression.”
In regard to this section of your article: “The organization has also promoted the criminalization of sexual acts among consenting LGBTQ+ individuals, among other far-right policies.”
ADF International’s response is: “ADF International has never promoted the criminalisation of homosexual acts.”
In a further statement, an ADF International spokesman added: “ADF International is the global partner of Alliance Defending Freedom. Our statement referred to the organisation in its entirety. Neither ADF nor ADF International support the criminalisation of homosexual acts and neither ever have.”
This story has been updated and includes ADFI’s reply.
