Musk’s AI chatbot faces global backlash over sexualized images of women and children

By KELVIN CHAN

LONDON (AP) — Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok is facing a backlash from governments around the world after a recent surge in sexualized images of women and children generated without consent by the artificial intelligence-powered tool.

On Tuesday, Britain’s top technology official demanded that Musk’s social media platform X take urgent action while a Polish lawmaker cited it as a reason to enact digital safety laws.

The European Union’s executive arm has denounced Grok while officials and regulators in France, India, Malaysia and Brazil have condemned the platform and called for investigations.

Rising alarm from disparate nations points to the nightmarish potential of nudification apps that use artificial intelligence to generate sexually explicit deepfake images.

Here’s a closer look:

Image generation

The problem emerged after the launch last year of Grok Imagine, an AI image generator that allows users to create videos and pictures by typing in text prompts. It includes a so-called “spicy mode” that can generate adult content.

It snowballed late last month when Grok, which is hosted on X, apparently began granting a large number of user requests to modify images posted by others. As of Tuesday, Grok users could still generate images of women using requests such as, “put her in a transparent bikini.”

The problem is amplified both because Musk pitches his chatbot as an edgier alternative to rivals with more safeguards, and because Grok’s images are publicly visible, and can therefore be easily spread.

Nonprofit group AI Forensics said in a report that it analyzed 20,000 images generated by Grok between Dec. 25 and Jan. 1 and found that 2% depicted a person who appeared to be 18 or younger, including 30 of young or very young women or girls, in bikinis or transparent clothes.

Musk response

Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, responded to a request for comment with the automated response, “Legacy Media Lies”.

However, X did not deny that the troublesome content generated through Grok exists. Yet it still claimed in a post on its Safety account, that it takes action against illegal content, including child sexual abuse material, “by removing it, permanently suspending accounts, and working with local governments and law enforcement as necessary.”

The platform also repeated a comment from Musk, who said, “Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”

A growing list of countries are demanding that Musk does more to rein in explicit or abusive content.

Britain

X must “urgently” deal with the problem, Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said Tuesday, adding that she supported additional scrutiny from the U.K.’s communications regulator, Ofcom.

Kendall said the content is “absolutely appalling, and unacceptable in decent society.”

“We cannot and will not allow the proliferation of these demeaning and degrading images, which are disproportionately aimed at women and girls.”

Ofcom said Monday it has made “urgent contact” with X.

“We are aware of serious concerns raised about a feature on Grok on X that produces undressed images of people and sexualised images of children,” the watchdog said.

The watchdog said it contacted both X and xAI to understand what steps it has taken to comply with British regulations.

Under the U.K.’s Online Safety Act, social media platforms must prevent and remove child sexual abuse material when they become aware of it.

Poland

A Polish lawmaker used Grok on Tuesday as a reason for national digital safety legislation that would beef up protections for minors and make it easier for authorities to remove content.

In an online video, Wlodzimierz Czarzasty, speaker of the parliament, said he wanted make himself a target of Grok to highlight the problem, as well as appeal to Poland’s president for support of the legislation.

“Grok lately is stripping people. It is undressing women, men and children. We feel bad about it. I would, honestly, almost want this Grok to also undress me,” he said.

European Union

The bloc’s executive arm is “well aware” that Grok is being used to for “explicit sexual content with some output generated with child-like images,” European Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier said

“This is not spicy. This is illegal. This is appalling. This is disgusting. This is how we see it, and this has no place in Europe. This is not the first time that Grok is generating such output,” he told reporters Monday.

After Grok spread Holocaust-denial content last year, according to Regnier, the Commission sought more information from Musk’s social media platform X. The response from X is currently being analyzed, he said.

France

The Paris prosecutor’s office said it’s widening an ongoing investigation of X to include sexually explicit deepfakes after officials receiving complaints from lawmakers.

Three government ministers alerted prosecutors to “manifestly illegal content” generated by Grok and posted on X, according to a government statement last week.

The government also flagged problems with country’s communications regulator over possible breaches of the EU’s Digital Services Act.

“The internet is neither a lawless zone nor a zone of impunity: sexual offenses committed online constitute criminal offenses in their own right and fall fully under the law, just as those committed offline,” the government said.

India

The Indian government on Friday issued an ultimatum to X, demanding that it take down all “unlawful content” and take action against offending users. The country’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology also ordered the company to review Grok’s “technical and governance framework” and file a report on actions taken.

The ministry accused Grok of “gross misuse” of AI and serious failures of its safeguards and enforcement by allowing the generation and sharing of ”obscene images or videos of women in derogatory or vulgar manner in order to indecently denigrate them.”

The ministry warned failure to comply by the 72-hour deadline would expose the company to bigger legal problems, but the deadline passed with no public update from India.

Malaysia

The Malaysian communications watchdog said Saturday it was investigating X users who violated laws prohibiting spreading “grossly offensive, obscene or indecent content.”

The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission said it’s also investigating online harms on X, and would summon a company representative.

The watchdog said it took note of public complaints about X’s AI tools being used to digitally manipulate “images of women and minors to produce indecent, grossly offensive, or otherwise harmful content.”

Brazil

Lawmaker Erika Hilton said she reported Grok and X to the Brazilian federal public prosecutor’s office and the country’s data protection watchdog.

In a social media post, she accused both of of generating, then publishing sexualized images of women and children without consent.

She said X’s AI functions should be disabled until an investigation has been carried out.

Hilton, one of Brazil’s first transgender lawmakers, decried how users could get Grok to digitally alter any published photo, including “swapping the clothes of women and girls for bikinis or making them suggestive and erotic.”

“The right to one’s image is individual; it cannot be transferred through the ‘terms of use’ of a social network, and the mass distribution of child porn(asterisk)gr(asterisk)phy by an artificial intelligence integrated into a social network crosses all boundaries,” she said.

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AP writers Claudia Ciobanu in Warsaw, Lorne Cook in Brussels and John Leicester in Paris contributed to this report.