‘Grok flooded X with millions of sexualised pix in days’

Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, created and then publicly shared at least 1.8 million sexualised images of women, according to separate estimates of X data by the New York Times and the Center for Countering Digital Hate.Starting in late Dec, users on the social media platform inundated the chatbot’s X account with requests to alter real photos of women and children to remove their clothes, put them in bikinis and pose them in sexual positions, prompting a global outcry from victims and regulators.

In just nine days, Grok posted more than 4.4 million images. A review by NYT conservatively estimated that at least 41% of posts, or 1.8 million, most likely contained sexualised imagery of women.

A broader analysis by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, using a statistical model, estimated that 65%, or over three million, contained sexualised imagery of men, women or kids.The findings show how quickly Grok spread disturbing images, which earlier prompted govts in Britain, India, Malaysia and the US to start investigations into whether the images violated local laws. “This is industrial-scale abuse of women and girls,” said Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which conducts research on online hate and disinformation.

“There have been nudifying tools, but they have never had the distribution, ease of use or the integration into a large platform that Elon Musk did with Grok.

”X and Musk’s AI start-up, xAI, which owns X and makes Grok, did not respond to requests for comment. The interest in Grok’s image-editing abilities exploded on Dec 31, when Musk shared a photo generated by the chatbot of himself in a bikini, as well as a SpaceX rocket with a woman’s undressed body superimposed on top.

The chatbot has a public account on X, where users can ask it questions or request alterations to images.

Users flocked to the social media site, in many cases asking Grok to remove clothing in images of women and kids, after which the bot publicly posted the AI-generated images.On Jan 8, X limited Grok’s AI image creation to users who pay for some premium features, significantly reducing the number of images. Last week, X expanded those guardrails, saying it would no longer allow anyone to prompt Grok’s X account for “images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis.” Since then, Grok has largely ignored requests to dress women in bikinis, but has created images of them in leotards. The curbs did not extend to Grok’s app or website, which continue to allow users to generate sexual content in private.