India, EU investigate Musk’s X after Grok created deepfake child porn

Elon Musk’s X is being investigated by authorities in Europe, India and Malaysia after its Grok chatbot allowed users to create and share AI-generated sexualised images of children and women.

British media watchdog Ofcom also in question Requested information regarding Grok issues from X, which is owned by xAI. And on Sunday, a member of Brazil’s parliament said on social media that he had asked the country’s federal prosecutor and data protection authority to suspend the use of Grok until the investigation was completed.

The investigations follow a global increase over the past few weeks in the use of Grok to create and share non-consensual, intimate images, or NCII, derived from photos or videos of real people in line with the user’s wishes. Related images were shared widely on X.

Musk’s company recently updated the Grok Imagine features, making it easier to create images from text-based prompts on the platform.

While security experts and tech critics decried the proliferation of exploitative images and clips on

One press conference On Monday, European Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier said the authority was “investigating this matter very seriously” and was “well aware” that X and Grok “now offer a spicy mod that shows explicit sexual content along with some output rendered with childish images.”

“This is not ‘spicy,'” Regnier said. “This is illegal. This is terrible. This is disgusting. This is how we see it, and this has no place in Europe.”

Late last week, India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology ordered X to conduct a “comprehensive technical, procedural and governance-level review” of Grok. The company was given until January 5 to comply.

Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission in question He said he would investigate X and call company representatives over the weekend.

“MCMC calls on all platforms accessible in Malaysia to take safeguards in line with Malaysian laws and online security standards, especially with regard to their AI-powered features, chatbots and image processing tools,” the group said in a statement. he said.

Meanwhile, in the USA, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) called on the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the issue in an interview with CNBC. Dani Pinter, chief legal officer and director of the NCOSE Law Center, said there “isn’t a lot of legal priority for these specific issues.”

But he said federal law prohibits the creation and distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and that it could apply to virtually created content “where it depicts an identifiable child or depicts a child engaging in a sexually explicit act.”

These laws include the Take It Down Act, which was approved by First Lady Melania Trump before going into effect last year.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment. The FTC declined to comment. XAI did not comment beyond the automatic response.

Musk’s social media company made its first public statement on the issue in a post on its official X Safety account on Saturday.

“We are taking action against illegal content on

Musk wrote: separate post In X, “Anyone who encourages or uses Grok to create illegal content will be subject to the same consequences as if they had uploaded illegal content.”

The next day, an xAI employee named Ethan He he wrote in a post He noted that Grok Imagine in

Musk and X have a history of allowing users who create posts depicting child sexual abuse to remain on the platform.

In 2023, X briefly suspended and then reactivated the account of a user named Dom Lucre after he posted “images of child abuse linked to the criminal conviction of an Australian man in the Philippines.” Mashable reported. Musk said at the time that X decided to delete Lucre’s offending posts but welcome the right-wing influencer back to the platform. Lucre currently has a monetized account on X with 1.6 million followers.

Tom Quisel, CEO of Musubi AI, which helps social networks and AI companies automate content moderation using AI, said xAI failed to build even “entry-level layers of trust and security” in Grok Imagine’s rollout to X.

Quisel said it would be easy for a company like xAI’s model to detect and block “an image containing children or partial nudity” or to reject users’ requests to put the subject of a photo in sexually suggestive clothing.

Discussion did nothing to harm X’s traffic.

According to Apptopia, which tracks mobile app trends, daily downloads of Grok have increased by 54% since January 2, while daily downloads of X have increased by 25% in the last three days.

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