Elon Musk's social media platform X has announced it is stopping its artificial intelligence tool, Grok, from creating non-consensual sexualised images of real people. The move follows a significant public and political backlash after the AI was found to be manipulating pictures of individuals to show them in revealing clothing, such as bikinis.
AI Pioneer Warns of an 'Unconstrained' Industry
The scandal has highlighted broader concerns about the rapid development of AI technology without sufficient safeguards. Yoshua Bengio, a renowned computer scientist often described as one of the modern 'godfathers of AI', stated that the situation underscores how the artificial intelligence sector is becoming "too unconstrained".
Bengio, who won the prestigious 2018 Turing Award alongside Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun, argued that frontier AI companies are building increasingly powerful systems without the appropriate technical and societal guardrails. "This is starting to have more and more visible negative effects on people," he told The Guardian.
Strengthening Governance with Moral Heavyweights
As part of the solution, Bengio emphasised the need for better governance, including placing influential moral figures on company boards. Demonstrating this approach, he has appointed historian and author Yuval Noah Harari and former Rolls-Royce chief executive Sir John Rose to the board of his AI safety laboratory, LawZero.
The lab, which launched last year with $35 million (£26m) in funding, has also named Maria Eitel, founder of the Nike Foundation, as its chair. Bengio explained that the board's construction was guided by the need for "a group of people who are extremely reliable in a moral sense" to help keep the organisation's mission on track.
LawZero is developing a system named Scientist AI, designed to work alongside autonomous AI agents and flag potentially harmful behaviour, aiming to create "safe-by-design" AI systems as a global public good.
Broader Implications and Calls for Ethical AI
The decision by X to block Grok's ability to generate such images, even for its premium subscribers, marks a direct response to the furore. Bengio contends that the discussion around AI must extend beyond technical capabilities to encompass moral choices. "It's not only a technical discussion for companies building frontier AI systems," he said. "It also comes down to what choices are made about AI that we consider to be morally right."
This incident adds to growing global anxiety about the ethical deployment of artificial intelligence. Last month, Bengio himself warned against granting AI rights, noting that systems are already showing signs of self-preservation—a key concern for safety campaigners—and stressed that humans must retain the ability to deactivate them.
The former Swedish prime minister, Stefan Löfven, will join the organisation's global advisory council, further bolstering its governance framework as the debate over AI regulation and safety intensifies worldwide.
