The Spanish government will ask prosecutors to investigate the social media companies X, Meta and TikTok to determine whether they have committed criminal offences by allegedly allowing their AI to generate and disseminate child sexual abuse material.

Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said his government had taken the decision in order to protect “the mental health, dignity and rights of our sons and daughters” and to end the “impunity” of huge social media platforms.

The government said it was taking action on the basis of an expert report that had analysed “the potential criminal liability of increasingly widespread practices in the digital environment, such as the generation and dissemination of sexual content and child sexual abuse through deepfakes and the manipulation of real images to create others with explicit sexual content, thereby undermining the dignity of the victims”.

The report warned of the potential involvement of social media firms in these acts because they allow “their massive dissemination with a speed and opacity that greatly hinders detection and prosecution, while also facilitating the formation of networks that produce, share, and monetise this content”.

The move, agreed by the cabinet on Tuesday, was announced as the Sánchez administration prepares a series of measures that will include a social media ban for under-16s and legislation to hold tech companies responsible for hateful and harmful content.

It also comes less than a month after the European Commission launched an investigation into Elon Musk’s X over the production of sexually explicit images and the spreading of possible child sexual abuse material by the platform’s AI chatbot, Grok.

On Tuesday, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) – which monitors tech companies with European headquarters in Dublin – said the “large-scale” inquiry will focus on the generative artificial intelligence functionality associated with the Grok large language model.

The regulator’s deputy commissioner, Graham Doyle, said it had engaged with X over the alleged ability of users to prompt the @Grok account to generate sexualised images of real people, including children.

“The purpose of this investigation is to determine whether X complied with its obligations under the GDPR … with regard to the personal data processed of EU/EEA data subjects,” said Doyle.

Elma Saiz, a spokesperson for the Spanish government, said Madrid would not allow digital sexual violence against children to be “amplified or protected” by algorithms, adding: “What’s at stake here is the safety of our sons and daughters and the protection of their images, their privacy and their freedom.”

Saiz said the cabinet would formally ask the attorney general to investigate, and, if applicable, prosecute firms that had broken the law.

Meta said it could not comment on the proposed investigation as it did not have any detailed information on the matter. But it said it had an extremely strong stance on child sexual exploitation and on non-consensual intimate imagery – be it real or AI-generated – and removed all such content when it was found. X and TikTok have also been approached for comment.

Sánchez’s push to hold social media companies to account and to shield children from what he had called the “digital wild west” has attracted a furious response from the owners of some of the world’s largest tech firms.

Earlier this month, the prime minister said urgent action was needed because social media had become a “failed state where laws are ignored and crimes are tolerated”.

He also took Musk to task for using X to “amplify disinformation” over his administration’s decision to regularise 500,000 undocumented workers and asylum seekers, pointing out that Musk was himself a migrant.

The comments appeared to infuriate Musk, who called Sánchez “a tyrant and a traitor to the people of Spain” and a “true fascist totalitarian”.

The Spanish government’s plans also angered the Russian technology entrepreneur and Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov. In a blanket message sent to all Telegram users in Spain, he accused the Sánchez administration of “pushing dangerous new regulations that threaten your internet freedoms”, adding that the measures could turn Spain “into a surveillance state under the guise of ‘protection’.”

Spanish government sources pushed back, saying Durov’s unprecedented message to millions of users was designed to erode trust in institutions and demonstrated the need for social media and mobile messaging apps to be regulated.

“Spaniards cannot live in a world where foreign tech oligarchs can flood our phones with propaganda at will simply because the government has announced measures to protect minors and enforce the law,” they said.

Growing anxieties over the harmful effects of social media have led a number of governments, including Spain, Britain, Greece and France, to adopt or consider the adoption of more stringent legislation. In December, Australia became the first country to ban children under 16 from such platforms.