Palo Alto, California – More governments vowed crackdowns Thursday to prevent Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok from sexualizing images of real people as the backlash against deepfake porn grows.
The Philippines became the third country to ban Grok altogether, following Malaysia and Indonesia, while Britain and France said they would keep up the pressure.
Several countries have demanded that Musk’s xAI, the developer of Grok, rein in the chatbot after it was used to generate a flood of sexually explicit photos of women and children.
X said Wednesday that it would “geoblock the ability” of all Grok and X users to create images of people in “bikinis, underwear, and similar attire” in jurisdictions where such actions are illegal, and that image editing via Grok in general would be restricted to paid subscribers.
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The announcement came after California’s attorney general launched an investigation into xAI and several countries either blocked access to Grok or opened their own probes.
Governor Gavin Newsom had said that xAI’s “vile” decision to allow sexually explicit deepfakes to proliferate prompted him to urge the state’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, to hold the company accountable.
“We have zero tolerance for the AI-based creation and dissemination of nonconsensual intimate images or of child sexual abuse material,” Bonta said Wednesday while announcing the probe.
Grok’s so-called “Spicy Mode” allowed users to create deepfakes using simple text prompts such as “put her in a bikini” or “remove her clothes.”
An analysis of more than 20,000 Grok-generated images by AI Forensics, a Paris-based nonprofit, found that more than half depicted “individuals in minimal attire” – most of them women, and 2% appearing to be minors.
Adding further pressure onto Musk’s company Wednesday, a coalition of 28 civil society groups submitted open letters to the CEOs of Apple and Google, urging them to ban Grok and X from their app stores amid the surge in sexualized images.
Musk, meanwhile, has shown no remorse and has tried to brush off the outrage by claiming it was simply a pretext for censorship.
