BRUSSELS, March 14 (Reuters) -

Alibaba's ( BABA ) AliExpress risks a hefty fine after the

European Commission on Thursday opened an investigation into

dissemination of potentially illegal and pornographic materials,

the third such probe after X social media platform and TikTok.

The move comes under powers granted to the EU executive from

the Digital Services Act (DSA) which requires companies to do

more to tackle illegal and harmful products on their platforms.

"We are concerned that the systemic risks which have to do

with the dissemination of illegal products such as fake

medicines or non-compliant food or dietary supplements that are

not effective on AliExpress," Commission officials told

reporters.

Alibaba ( BABA ) did not immediately respond to a request for

comment.

The Commission on Thursday also sent requests for

information to Microsoft's ( MSFT ) Bing, Google Search

, Meta Platforms' ( META ) Facebook, Instagram,

Snapchat, ByteDance's TikTok and Elon Musk's X social

media platform on their use of generative artificial

intelligence.

Commission officials said they will examine 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 Commission also sent a request for information to

Microsoft's ( MSFT ) Linkedin on the potential use of personal data for

targeted advertising following a complaint from civil society

organisations.

The probes into X and TikTok are still under way.