Featured Image Credit: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Topics: Elon Musk, Artificial Intelligence, Social Media, Twitter
Ellie Kemp
Topics: Elon Musk, Artificial Intelligence, Social Media, Twitter
Elon Musk has addressed reports of his AI bot Grok generating 'undressed' photos of underage girls on X.
The tech billionaire's large language model (LLM) launched in November 2023 under his xAI company.
Grok, essentially a sassier version of ChatGPT, raised eyebrows with its NSFW 'spicy' mode last year, which sexted users when prompted to do so. But users have more recently been using Grok to generate explicit images of women without their consent.
It's something Musk's ex, Ashley St Clair, has been very vocal about.
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Last week, she claimed someone on X made a photo of her 'removing her clothes' as a 14-year-old.
The previous month, Grok's X account even apologized after it generated and shared an AI image of two young girls - estimated to be between 12 and 16 years old - in sexualized attire based on a user's prompt.
Other social media users have reported their own photos being sexualized by X users via Grok.
The issue has now prompted UK communications body Ofcom to launch its own 'urgent' probe over 'serious concerns' of Grok producing 'undressed images of people and sexualized images of children'.
On Wednesday (January 14), Musk addressed the situation himself on X, the platform he also owns.
The 54-year-old responded to another tweet in which a user claimed not to have seen any Grok-generated explicit photos - except one.
"I [am] not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok. Literally zero," he began.
"Obviously, Grok does not spontaneously generate images, it does so only according to user requests.
"When asked to generate images, it will refuse to produce anything illegal, as the operating principle for Grok is to obey the laws of any given country or state."
Musk concluded: "There may be times when adversarial hacking of Grok prompts does something unexpected. If that happens, we fix the bug immediately."
Grok has made one change to how it runs since the Ofcom probe.
Users are now prompted to buy a subscription if they want to use the AI service to alter images.
But Downing Street, who have threatened to ban X in the UK, have since dismissed the latest changes as 'insulting' and 'not a solution'.
Sir Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, has previously called for Musk and X to 'get their act together' and 'get a grip' on the situation.
"If another media company had billboards in town centres showing unlawful images, it would act immediately to take them down or face public backlash," a spokesperson for the prime minister added.
In a statement previously given to UNILAD, X said: "We take action against illegal content on X, including Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), by removing it, permanently suspending accounts, and working with local governments and law enforcement as necessary.
"Anyone using or prompting Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content."