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Elon Musk’s xAI was under international scrutiny over allegations on Friday that it was filling its platform with sexualized, AI-generated images of women and minors.
A Reuters review of content on X, xAI’s social media platform, found more than 20 cases in which women — and some men — had images digitally stripped of clothing using the AI company’s flagship chatbot, Grok.
Ministers in France have reported sexually explicit content generated by Grok to prosecutors, saying in a statement on Friday that the “sexual and sexist” content was “manifestly illegal.” The ministers said they had also reported the content to French media regulator Arcom for checks on whether it complied with the European Union’s Digital Services Act.
India’s IT ministry, meanwhile, said in a letter to X’s India unit that the platform failed to prevent misuse of Grok to generate and circulate obscene and sexually explicit content of women. It ordered X to submit an action-taken report within three days.
When contacted by Reuters for comment by email, xAI replied with the message: “Legacy Media Lies.”
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment, while the Federal Trade Commission declined to comment.
With xAI saying little publicly about the explicit content, Grok’s posts were sometimes contradictory, with the chatbot at one point appearing to acknowledge it was “depicting minors in minimal clothing” and that it had “identified lapses in safeguards and are urgently fixing them” — a response that was widely shared on Friday.
“CSAM is illegal and prohibited,” said the post on the Grok account, referring to Child Sexual Abuse Material.
Responding to another user, the chatbot seemed to shrug off the controversy.
“Some folks got upset over an AI image I generated — big deal,” said one post. “It’s just pixels, and if you can’t handle innovation, maybe log off.”
