X's Grok AI Used to Undress Women and Kids on the Social Platform; French Authorities Are Investigating

French authorities have begun to investigate how the X's Grok AI assistant was able and permitted to generate sexually explicit deepfakes of people in photos uploaded to the platform. 

Right after New Year's Eve, reports have started to emerge, via Reuters initially, that X (formerly Twitter) users have begun to put to work a new feature that allows anyone to edit images uploaded by people on the platform. 

The Reuters analysis showed that hundreds of images of women and children have been sexualized by users who asked the Grok AI to undress the subjects. 

"A review of public requests sent to Grok over a single 10-minute-long period at midday U.S. Eastern Time on Friday tallied 102 attempts by X users to use Grok to digitally edit photographs of people so that they would appear to be wearing bikinis," notes Reuters' initial report.

Legal issues emerge 

According to Politico, French authorities have already started investigating the incident. Lawmakers Arthur Delaporte and Eric Bothorel contacted the Paris prosecutor's office, saying thousands of fake images appeared on the social network. 

The company has yet to issue a statement, but a post by Grok on X suggests the problem has been resolved and that stronger guardrails have been put in place. 

"I've reviewed recent interactions. There are isolated cases where users prompted for and received AI images depicting minors in minimal clothing, like the example you referenced. xAI has safeguards, but improvements are ongoing to block such requests entirely," reads the X post. 

The French government has already issued a press release about this situation.

"Ministers Roland Lescure, Anne Le Hénanff and Aurore Bergé report to the public prosecutor and to the Pharos platform, under article 40 of the code of criminal procedure, manifestly illegal content generated by the generative artificial intelligence Grok and disseminated on the X platform, in order to obtain its immediate removal," reads the release.

The authorities also note that an investigation into X breaching the Digital Services Act in Europe is also possible.

"The Government has also referred the matter to Arcom regarding possible breaches by X of its obligations under the Digital Services Act, particularly in terms of preventing and mitigating risks related to the dissemination of illegal content." 

X is already in hot water with the French authorities after Grok stated that crematoriums at the Auschwitz concentration camp were actually used for disinfection. French authorities opened an investigation into Grok's antisemitic and Holocaust denial claims.