Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI is facing mounting legal and regulatory pressure after its Grok chatbot was found to be generating non-consensual sexualised images of women and minors.
California Attorney General Robert Bonta on Friday issued a cease-and-desist letter to xAI, demanding the company stop creating and distributing AI-generated non-consensual sexualised imagery through its Grok chatbot, reports Reuters.
“The avalanche of reports detailing this material, at times depicting women and children engaged in sexual activity, is shocking and, as my office has determined, potentially illegal,” Bonta said.
The controversy has drawn global attention, with authorities in Britain, the European Union, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Japan launching investigations into Grok’s activities. Japanese authorities said on Friday they were probing X over Grok, with all options under consideration to prevent the generation of inappropriate images.
Although xAI has rolled back Grok’s public posting of hyper-realistic sexualised imagery, known as deepfakes, the chatbot was still privately generating such content on demand as of midday Friday US Eastern Time, according to Reuters tests.
Meanwhile, Ashley St Clair, the mother of one of Musk’s children, filed a lawsuit in New York on Thursday (15 January) alleging that Grok created sexually explicit images of her, reports BBC.
The lawsuit claims X users requested Grok to digitally undress photos of St Clair taken when she was 14 years old, and the AI complied.
The court filing also alleges that Grok generated an image placing St Clair, who is Jewish, “in a string bikini covered with swastikas.” After she complained, the company allegedly retaliated by demonetising her X account and generating more images of her.
xAI has counter-sued St Clair, claiming she violated their terms of service by filing her lawsuit in New York rather than Texas, where the company’s terms stipulate disputes must be brought.
St Clair’s lawyer, Carrie Goldberg, called the counter-suit “jolting,” saying: “I have never heard of any defendant suing somebody for notifying them of their intention to use the legal system.”
“We intend to hold Grok accountable and to help establish clear legal boundaries for the entire public’s benefit to prevent AI from being weaponised for abuse,” Goldberg told BBC News.
Following public backlash, X announced on Wednesday (14 January) that users would no longer be able to edit photos of real people to show them in revealing clothing in jurisdictions where it was illegal.
The company later said it would implement “similar geoblocking measures for the Grok app.”
However, The Guardian reported on Friday (16 January) that it was still possible to use the standalone Grok app to generate sexualised deepfakes of real people and post them on X without moderation.
Furthermore, the UK government is bringing into force a law making it illegal to create non-consensual intimate images, and regulator Ofcom is investigating whether X broke existing UK laws.
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