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xAI Under Fire Over Sexualised Images from Grok

Elizabeth Greenberg

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grok xai
Ofcom and the European Commission are seekng answers from the AI firm over potentially illegal and illicit content generation.

Elon Musk’s xAI is coming under regulatory fire after reports show its Grok AI tool is being used to make “sexualised images of children” as well as abusive images of women.

Ofcom has directly reached out to the AI firm, with an EU Commission spokesperson calling the images “unlawful.”

“This is illegal. This is appalling. This is disgusting. This is how we see it, and this has no place in Europe,” Thomas Regnier said to reporters Monday.

An Ofcom spokesperson said it “made urgent contact with X and xAI to understand what steps they have taken to comply with their legal duties to protect users in the UK.”

Officials in India have also joined in the growing demands toward X over its AI image generation.

Reports from the BBC and Reuters, as well as other media outlets, showed that Grok was creating a myriad of images of women and children in inappropriately revealing clothing, in what the AI firm called ‘spicy mode’.

The mode does not enable users to fully nudify images, it does enable users to prompt for revealing clothing and sexualised poses. Researchers at French non-profit AI Forensics found manipulated images included people under the age of 18, including some under the age of five.

Ofcom has opened an investigation into Grok following concerns that it was producing undressed images of real people as well.

While Ofcom reached out to xAI on Monday, X released a warning on Sunday urging users to not use its AI tool Grok to generate illegal material.

Further, Musk warned that anyone found to have used xAI to generate illegal content would “suffer the same consequences” as if they had created the images themselves.


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The illegal and controversial images appear to be in direct breach of X’s own policies, which state at Grok cannot be used to in “depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic matter.”

The creation or sharing of sexually explicit images of a person without their consent is considered illegal under the UK’s Online Safety Act, which says that firms should take “appropriate steps” to mitigate the issue.

Celebrities have reportedly been targeted in the onslaught of nude deepfakes generated by Grok users. A mother of one of Elon Musk’s children reportedly had an image of her at the age of 14 ‘declothed’ by the AI tool, according to the Guardian. Catherine, Princess of Wales, was also a victim of AI tool’s undressing, the BBC reported.

Elizabeth Greenberg

Staff Writer

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