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
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 December 25 and January 1 and found that 2 per cent 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.” 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 UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom.
Kendall said the content is absolutely appalling, and unacceptable in decent society.” Ofcom said Monday it has made urgent contact with X.
The watchdog said it contacted both X and xAI to understand what steps it has taken to comply with British regulations.
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 to make himself a target of Grok to highlight the problem, as well as appeal to Poland’s president for support of the legislation.
**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.
France The Paris prosecutor’s office said it’s widening an ongoing investigation of X to include sexually explicit deepfakes after officials received 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.
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 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.
