The social media platform X said late Wednesday that it was blocking Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot created by Elon Musk, from generating sexualized and naked images of real people on its platforms in certain locations.
The move comes amid global outrage over explicit, A.I.-generated images that have flooded X. In the last week, regulators around the world have opened investigations into Grok, and some countries have banned the application.
Earlier Wednesday, investigators in California said they were examining whether Grok had violated state laws. Ofcom, Britain’s independent online safety watchdog, opened an inquiry into Grok on Monday.
“This is a welcome development,” the British regulator said in a statement on Thursday in response to the new restrictions on Grok. “However, our formal investigation remains ongoing.”
If X is found to have broken British law and refuses to comply with Ofcom’s requests for action, the regulator has the power, if necessary, to seek a court order that would prevent payment providers and advertisers from working with X.
X said in a statement on Wednesday that it would use “geoblocking” to restrict Grok from fulfilling requests for such imagery in jurisdictions where such content was illegal.
The restrictions did not appear to apply to the stand-alone Grok app and website, outside of X. Grok and X are both owned by xAI. X did not respond to a request for comment.
“We remain committed to making X a safe platform for everyone and continue to have zero tolerance for any forms of child sexual exploitation, non-consensual nudity, and unwanted sexual content,” the statement said.
Last week, X announced it had limited Grok’s image-generation capabilities to subscribers, who would pay a premium for the feature, but that did little to placate regulators around the world. Indonesia and Malaysia have banned the chatbot, and the European Union has opened investigations into its explicit “deepfakes.”
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, has sharply criticized the technology. “It horrifies me that a technology platform allows users to digitally undress women and children online. It is inconceivable behavior,” she told European media outlets earlier this month. “And the harm caused by this is very real.”
The European Union has powerful tools for monitoring and stalling such activity, including the Digital Services Act, which forces large technology firms to monitor content posted to their platforms — or to face consequences including major fines.
Those regulations are often criticized by the Trump administration, which has argued that the European Union’s digital rules amount to censorship and unfairly discriminate against big American technology companies.
Regulators in the European Union have ordered Grok to retain documents related to the chatbot as it examines its creation of sexual images. Sexual images of children are illegal to possess or share in many countries, and some also ban A.I.-generated sexual images of children.
Several countries, including the United States and Britain, have also enacted laws against sharing nonconsensual nude imagery, often referred to as “revenge porn.” X’s policy bars users from posting “intimate photos or videos of someone that were produced or distributed without their consent.”
- Credit: The New York Times
- Author: Ali Watkins
