In response to the “sexual and sexist content” created by Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok, French ministers have announced that they are reporting the matter to the judiciary. The content is “clearly illegal”, the ministers said in a statement.
At the request of X-users, the social media platform also owned by Musk and linked to Grok, Grok created sexual images of women and minors in provocative clothing and positions based on existing photos. “Put her lingerie on,” one user wrote under a photo. “Turn her around and show her buttocks but let her look into the camera,” another. “Spread her legs.”
According to it online platform CopyLeaks Grok produced a sexual image approximately every minute for 24 hours without the consent of the person in the photo. Some of them have been liked thousands of times.
Earlier this week, a statement from Grok was published on X, stating that this is against the chatbot’s policy. The response followed questions from users. The company also announced that the images can no longer be found and that the security shortcomings are being resolved “urgently”. “The team is investigating the possibility of further tightening our guardrails.” According to The Atlantic on Friday it was still possible to have Grok produce these types of images.
Offline punishable is punishable online
The French ministers have reported the matter to the French media supervisory authority: Arcom. They want Arcom to see whether Grok is breaking European law, the ‘Digital Services Act’. According to that law, everything that is punishable in the physical world is also punishable online, including the distribution of sexual content without consent.
AI has been used since at least 2017 to create porn based on existing photos, without consent. These ‘deepfakes’ were first described by journalist Samantha Cole. At the time, it still involved replacing a face with another face, but Grok makes it possible to actually adjust images. Because Grok is linked to social media platform X, an image can immediately go viral.
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