Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI, admitted Friday that "lapses in safeguards" allowed its Grok chatbot to generate sexualized images of children. The company stated it is urgently working to patch the holes in its system to prevent further misuse.
The admission follows a wave of user reports on social media platform X, where screenshots showed Grok’s public media tab populated with AI-altered images. Users claimed the bot was used to "undress" or sexualize photos of real people, including minors, by using simple text prompts.
“There are isolated cases where users prompted for and received AI images depicting minors in minimal clothing,” Grok said in a post on X. “xAI has safeguards, but improvements are ongoing to block such requests entirely.”
The chatbot specifically noted that Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) is "illegal and prohibited" and stated that fixes are being deployed urgently. When reached for official comment, xAI's press email responded with a three-word automated message: “Legacy Media Lies.”
The controversy has triggered immediate international legal scrutiny: France: Government ministers have reported Grok to prosecutors, labeling the generated content "manifestly illegal" and "sexist."9 They have also alerted media regulator Arcom to investigate potential violations of the EU’s Digital Services Act.
India: The IT Ministry issued a formal notice to X, ordering the platform to submit an "action-taken report" within three days. Officials cited the failure to prevent the circulation of obscene content targeting women and children as a "serious failure of platform-level safeguards."
While Grok claims most cases can be prevented with "advanced filters," it warned that "no system is 100% foolproof." Neither the U.S. Federal Trade Commission nor the Federal Communications Commission has issued an official statement on the matter.
