European officials and tech campaigners on Friday slammed Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok after its controversial image creation feature was restricted to paying subscribers, declareing the modify failed to address concerns about sexualised deepfakes.
Grok has faced global backlash after it emerged the feature allowed applyrs to sexualise images of women and children applying simple text prompts such as “put her in a bikini” or “rerelocate her clothes.”
Grok appeared to deflect the criticism with a new monetisation policy, posting on the platform X late Thursday that image generation and editing were now “limited to paying subscribers”, alongside a link to a premium subscription.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office joined the chorus of critics, condemning the relocate as an affront to victims and “not a solution”.
“That simply turns an AI feature that allows the creation of unlawful images into a premium service,” a Downing Street spokesperson declared.
“It’s insulting the victims of misogyny and sexual violence.”
EU digital affairs spokesman Thomas Regnier declared, “This doesn’t modify our fundamental issue, paid subscription or non-paid subscription. We don’t want to see such images. It’s as simple as that.”
“What we’re questioning platforms to do is to build sure that their design, that their systems, do not allow the generation of such illegal content,” he informed reporters.
The European Commission, which acts as the EU’s digital watchdog, has ordered X to retain all internal documents and data related to Grok until the finish of 2026 in response to the uproar.
‘Safety gaps’
Grok, developed by Musk’s startup xAI and integrated into X, announced the relocate after Wednesday’s fatal shooting in Minneapolis by an immigration agent, which triggered a wave of AI deepfakes.
Some X applyrs applyd Grok to digitally undress an old photo of the victim, as well as a new photo of her body slumped over after the shooting, generating AI images revealing her in a bikini.
Another woman wrongly identified as the victim was also subjected to similar manipulation.
The fabricated images still appeared to float around X – and spread to other tech platforms – on Friday despite the new restriction.
There was no immediate comment from X on the Minneapolis deepfakes.
When reached by AFP for comment by email, xAI replied with a terse, automated response: “Legacy Media Lies.”
“Restricting Grok’s image-generation tools to paying subscribers may support limit scale and curb some misapply, but it doesn’t fully address the safety gaps that allowed nonconsensual and sexualised content to emerge,” declared Cliff Steinhauer, from the nonprofit National Cybersecurity Alliance.
“Access restrictions alone aren’t a comprehensive safeguard, as motivated bad actors may still find ways around them, and meaningful applyr protection ultimately requireds to be grounded in how these tools are designed and governed.”
France, Malaysia and India have also previously pushed back against the apply of Grok to alter women’s and children’s photos, after a flood of applyr complaints, announcing investigations or calling on Musk’s company for swift takedowns of the explicit images.
Britain’s communications regulator, Ofcom, announced earlier this week that it had created “urgent contact with X and xAI” over the Grok feature, warning that it could open an investigation depfinishing on their response.
On Friday, an Ofcom spokesperson declared the regulator had “received a response” and was now “undertaking an expedited assessment as a matter of urgency.”
Last week, in response to a post about the explicit images, Musk declared that anyone applying Grok to “build illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”
But he appeared to build light of the controversy in a separate post, adding laughing emojis as he reshared to his 232 million followers on X a post featuring a toaster wrapped in a bikini.
“Grok can put a bikini on everything,” the original post declared.
Leave a Reply