Alibaba’s AliExpress that has a major presence in Australia is being probed for the illegal distribution of porn, and ‘harmful’ products on their site.
The business that also sells an extensive range of CE and electrical products into Australia, is under investigation by the European Union, with Australia being listed on their site as a location that they ship porn products from along with Turkey and China.
Overnight the European Commission opened an investigation into dissemination of potentially illegal and pornographic materials, the move comes after EU executive from the Digital Services Act (DSA), division were granted more powers to tackle illegal and harmful products sold on online platforms.
Commission officials told reporters they were concerned about the potential dissemination of illegal products such as fake medicines, noncompliant food, and ineffective dietary supplements on AliExpress.
Currently AliExpress is looking to ship more Asian food products into Australia including Korean food.
Lately, AliExpress has been ramping up its efforts to onboard more Korean companies to sell their products on its platform.
This initiative comes in response to increasing feedback that the range of products available on AliExpress has primarily focused on everyday items from Chinese sellers, which are also made by Chinese manufacturers now under investigation relating to the ingredients found in the foods.
EU investigators are also looking into possible hidden links where noncompliant products can be sold in a way that is not transparent to users.
AliExpress said it respected all applicable rules and regulations in the markets where it operates.
In the EU organisations such as Amazon and AliExpress and Temu so-called VLOPs or very large online platforms, are companies with more than 45 million users in Europe that are subject to the tough new DSA rules.
Violations can lead to fines of up to 6% of global annual turnover.
The commission on Thursday also sent requests for information to Microsoft’s Bing, Google Search, Meta Platforms’ Facebook and Instagram, Snapchat, Byte Dance’s TikTok, and Elon Musk’s X over their use of generative artificial intelligence.
Commission officials said they want to know whether the companies conduct risk assessments and have risk mitigation measures to tackle potentially harmful generative AI content.
“We are of course concerned with the harmful category, whether it is deep fake news or election-relevant deep fakes that seek to manipulate the public environment,” the officials said.
The companies have until April 3 to reply to questions related to the protection of elections and April 24 on other matters.
The growing popularity of generative AI systems such as Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s chatbot Gemini has fuelled concerns about misinformation and fake news.
The commission also sent a request for information to Microsoft’s LinkedIn over the potential use of personal data for targeted advertising following a complaint from civil society organizations, giving it an April 5 deadline to respond.
The probes into X and TikTok are ongoing.
