() — Elon Musk’s Grok is encountering increasing criticism and potential government intervention globally following the artificial intelligence chatbot generating explicit images, including those involving minors, on the social media platform X in response to user requests.
Malaysian officials stated in astatementOn Saturday, they are examining images generated by Grok following reports regarding the inappropriate use of AI to alter images of women and children, resulting in indecent, extremely offensive, or otherwise damaging material.
Producing or distributing this type of harmful content is considered a violation under Malaysian law, stated the Communications and Multimedia Commission.statementSaturday. The media regulator will look into X users suspected of breaking the law and will call on representatives from the company, it stated.
While X is not currently alicensed service provider, it is responsible for stopping the spread of harmful content on its platform,” according to the commission’s statement.
Musk mentioned in a post on X on Sunday that the platform addresses illegal content, such as material involving children, by deleting it, permanently banning accounts, and collaborating with authorities when needed.
“Anyone utilizing Grok to generate illegal material will face the same repercussions as if they uploaded such content,” he stated in the post.
The Malaysian government is the most recent to voice its opiniongrowing concernRegarding Grok, India wrote to X on Friday, requesting a thorough examination of the AI chatbot to ensure it does not produce content involving “nudity, sexualization, sexually explicit material, or other illegal content.” A copy of the letter dated January 2 has been seen.
The platform must submit a report on the actions taken to India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology within 72 hours, and it was cautioned about potential legal consequences under criminal and IT laws. The government mentioned it could explore regulations for social media platforms regarding inappropriate AI-generated content.
“The Parliamentary Committee has suggested a robust law to oversee social media,” said India’s Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in an.interviewwith CNBC-TV 18. “We are taking it into account.”
On Friday, France criticized Grok for producing “clearly illegal” sexual content on X without individuals’ permission. The French government stated in a release that images generated by Grok may breach the European Union’s Digital Services Act. The regulation mandates major platforms to reduce the risk of illegal content being disseminated, as mentioned in the statement.
The chatbot’s inappropriate images seem to breach its own acceptable-use policy, which bans the sexualization of minors. Several of the images have been removed.
A written request for comment sent to xAI, the company behind Grok and X, received the response “Legacy Media Lies.”
In the last two weeks, more users on the platform have been asking Grok to generate images and alter photos of women and children in a sexual manner. This pattern spread worldwide after theplatformlaunched the edit-image function before Christmas.
Grok generated a poston X in reply to users’ questions on Friday that it had discovered “shortcomings in protections” that were being quickly addressed.
–With help from Santosh Kumar and Advait Palepu.
(Updates with Musk’s comments from the fifth paragraph.)
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