Controversy has turned into political pressure for Elon Musk as the UK government has threatened to ban X following new tools that allow Grok to generate NSFW images of people, including those of children.
Grok, compared to other similar AI tools, is known for garnering bad publicity as it has repeatedly been caught sharing far-right political rhetoric including praise of Adolf Hitler and claims of a 'white genocide' in South Africa.
A recent update to the AI model that's integrated into X has proven to be its most controversial and highly criticized move yet though, as it allowed used to take advantage of image editing tools to undress individuals, often leaving them with little more than a bikini.
This is obviously incredibly dangerous and potentially risks breaking new AI-based laws for nonconsensual images put into place by President Trump, but it became even more of an issue for Elon Musk when the tool was used to remove the clothes from clearly underaged girls.
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Following this, X and Elon Musk has been pressured by the UK government and Prime Minister Keir Starmer to remove the ability to generate images like this full stop, or the platform will risk being banned outright in one of its biggest markets.
As reported by the Independent, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has officially confirmed that Grok was used to create "criminal imagery of children aged between 11 and 13."
While the official account for Grok issued an apology for generating the aforementioned content, it's unclear what legal ramifications this will lead to and who they will be directed towards, as the lack of explicit regulation surrounding AI-generated content leaves things in a gray area.
Starmer has asserted that Ofcom – the UK's regulator for communications services – has the government's "full support to take action" against X.
He added that the use of Grok in this manner is "unlawful," asserting that "we're not going to tolerate it. I've asked for all options to be on the table. It's disgusting. X need to get their act together and get this material down."
X has since tweaked Grok so that only 'paying subscribers' are able to use the image generation and editing tools, which somewhat reduces the amount that it can be used but does nothing to limit what can be produced, and some might argue that Musk is now profiting off of it.
The UK government has also responded to this change, as shared by Politics UK, calling the move 'insulting' and 'not a solution'.
"This simply turns an AI feature that allows the creation of unlawful images into a premium service," the government continued. "In fact, it's insulting the victims of misogyny and sexual violence."