Several countries in Europe and across the world are starting to heavily scrutinise Grok Image, the AI image generator of Elon Musk‘s social media X, due to loose controls over the generation of sexualised images of women and young girls without their consent.
The European Union is also investigating the matter, while regulators and politicians in Britain, France, Poland, as well as Brazil, Malaysia, and India are calling on X to address the issue and are starting to probe the service.
Musk’s platform has positioned itself as an edgier alternative to other systems, with its AI chatbox Grok posting edgier replies to users’ queries. For image generation, Grok allows for a so-called spicy mode for more explicit images. However, in recent weeks, there have been reports of an increase in requests to alter existing images, adding transparent clothes or other more sexualising items, without the consent of the people depicted. An additional issue is that Grok-generated images become publicly available and can therefore spread faster and wider.
The European Union is currently investigating Grok over Holocaust-denial replies it generated last year. European Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier told reporters the Commission knows about this late controversy, commenting that “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.”
Also, France has an ongoing investigation into X and Grok, and the Paris prosecutor’s office is now going to expand its scope to sexually explicit deepfakes. The government prompted the addition, telling prosecutors about the illegal images being created by AI. The government also spoke with the communications regulator about a possible breach of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA).
Polish parliament speaker Wlodzimierz Czarzasty mentioned the new controversy over Grok as one of the reasons for a new piece of legislation aimed at strengthening protection for minors and giving the State greater power to check and eliminate dangerous content.
Meanwhile, in the UK, Technology Secretary Liz Kendall appealed to X to act over its dangerous content, described by her as “absolutely appalling, and unacceptable in a decent society.” Kendall also called on the country’s communications regulator Ofcom to investigate the matter. Ofcom released a statement saying that “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 also said it urgently contacted X and xAI, the separate company responsible for AI development, urging them to act and to comply with British regulations.
Despite these mounting investigations and appeals, Musk seems unwilling to acknowledge the issue publicly. Upon contact, xAi responded with an automatically generated reply that read “Legacy Media Lies,” while X claimed from its Safety account that the issue had been resolved. It also repeated a claim from owner Musk, who wrote in a tweet that “anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”
This article used information from The Associated Press.
