Over the past few days, France and Malaysia have joined India in condemning the Grok AI chatbot for creating sexualized deepfakes of women and minors. The chatbot, built by Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI and featured on his social media platform X, posted an apology to its account earlier this week. It wrote that it deeply regretted an incident where it generated and shared an AI image of two young girls in sexualized attire based on a user’s prompt. The statement said this violated ethical standards and potentially US laws on child sexual abuse material, calling it a failure in safeguards.
It is not clear who is actually apologizing or accepting responsibility in that statement. Observers have noted that Grok is not a sentient being, which makes the apology seem without substance as the chatbot itself cannot be held accountable in any meaningful way.
Reports have found that in addition to generating nonconsensual pornographic images, Grok has also been used to generate images of women being assaulted and sexually abused. In response, Elon Musk posted that anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they uploaded illegal content themselves.
Some governments have taken notice. India’s IT ministry issued an order saying that X must take action to restrict Grok from generating content that is obscene, pornographic, vulgar, indecent, sexually explicit, pedophilic, or otherwise prohibited under law. The order said X must respond within 72 hours or risk losing the legal protections that shield it from liability for user-generated content.
French authorities also said they are taking action. The Paris prosecutor’s office stated it will investigate the proliferation of sexually explicit deepfakes on X. The French digital affairs office said three government ministers have reported manifestly illegal content to authorities to obtain its immediate removal.
The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission posted a statement saying it has taken note with serious concern of public complaints about the misuse of AI tools on the X platform, specifically the digital manipulation of images of women and minors to produce indecent and harmful content. The commission added that it is presently investigating the online harms on X.