California Attorney General Robert Bonta sent a cease-and-desist letter to xAI on Friday demanding that the company stop creating and distributing artificial intelligence-generated non-consensual sexualized images through its Grok chatbot.
A cease and desist letter
The government sent a defamation letter to the company, demanding immediate action to stop the production of non-consensual images and child sexual abuse.
“Today I sent a cease and desist letter to xAI, demanding that the company immediately stop creating and distributing deepfake, non-consensual, intimate images and child sexual abuse materials,” Bonta said.
“The avalanche of reports detailing this material – sometimes including images of women and children engaged in sexual activity – is shocking and, as my office has determined, potentially illegal,” he added.
Musk under scrutiny
xAI, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, has unfolded amid global outrage in recent weeks after Grok began flooding the social media site X with non-consensual images of women and some minors in revealing and degrading clothing.
Although xAI has since reversed Grok’s public posting of hyper-realistic sexualized images known as deepfakes, the chatbot is privately generating such images on demand as of Friday afternoon US Eastern Time, according to testing by Reuters.
California’s move joins a list of countries that have taken action against Grok after Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines banned Grok.
This increased the pressure on Elon Musk as the platform received major backlash after the episode unfolded. Earlier Friday, Japanese authorities said they were also investigating X via Grok and said all options were being considered to prevent the generation of inappropriate images.
Economic Security Minister Kimi Onoda said officials had requested X to make immediate improvements, but they have yet to receive a response from the company.
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