Degrading images of women and children with their clothes digitally removed by Grok AI continue to be shared on Elon Musk's X, despite the platform's commitment to suspend users who generate them. The trend, which went viral over the new year period, has prompted the UK's communications watchdog, Ofcom, to make 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.
Ofcom said on Monday it would assess whether an investigation is necessary based on the company's response. Meanwhile, politicians and women's rights campaigners accused the UK government of dragging its heels by failing to enact legislation passed six months ago making the creation of such intimate images illegal.
The European Commission also said on Monday it was looking very seriously into complaints that Grok was being used to generate and disseminate sexually explicit childlike images. Researchers at AI Forensics examined 50,000 mentions of @Grok on X and 20,000 images generated by the tool over a week-long period between 25 December and 1 January, finding that at least a quarter of mentions were requests to create an image, with a high prevalence of terms including 'remove', 'bikini' and 'clothing'.
More than half the images were of people in minimal attire such as underwear or bikinis, the majority being women under 30. A minority of images, or 2%, appeared to show people aged 18 or under, including children under five. The researchers said most of the content was still available online and included requests to generate Nazi and Islamic State propaganda.
Initially, Musk expressed amusement at the trend, posting a crying-with-laughter emoji. After global outcry, he posted that anyone using Grok to make illegal content would suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content. An X spokesperson said the platform 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.
An earlier statement from Grok announcing that it had identified lapses in safeguards and was urgently fixing them turned out to have been generated by artificial intelligence, and it was not clear whether the company was actually taking action to fix safeguarding lapses.
