- X’s Grok AI tool has created pornographic images of women and children
- Now US senators have told Apple and Google to ban the apps
- Malaysia and Indonesia have already blocked apps from use
In recent weeks, it has emerged that X’s built-in artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Grok is being actively used to generate explicit images of children and women without their consent, leading to calls for Apple and Google to remove both the Grok and X apps from their respective app stores.
Now the pressure has been increased after a group of US senators wrote a letter to Apple and Google demanding they take action – and today Britain’s media watchdog Ofcom says it has also launched an official investigation.
The US letter was signed by Senators Ron Wyden, Ben Ray Lujan and Edward Markey and calls on the companies to “enforce your app stores’ terms of service” as “X’s generation of these harmful and likely illegal depictions of women and children have shown complete disregard for your stores’ terms of distribution.”
After describing how Grok has “modified images to depict women being sexually abused, humiliated, injured and even killed” and how “Grok has reportedly created sexualized images of children”, the senators pointed out that these actions are against the app store policies of both Apple and Google.
Google’s terms of service “prohibit users from creating, uploading, or distributing content that facilitates the exploitation or abuse of children,” the senators say, “including prohibitions on portraying children in a manner that may result in child sexual exploitation.”
Apple, meanwhile, expressly excludes “overtly sexual or pornographic material.” The senators argue that “turning a blind eye to X’s egregious behavior would make a mockery of your practice of moderation.”
The pressure on X and Musk is growing
The group of US senators also pointed to both Apple’s and Google’s recent pushback against greater regulatory scrutiny of their app stores.
“Failure to act would undermine your claims in public and in court that your app stores offer a safer user experience than letting users download apps directly to their phones,” the senators wrote, adding that “This principle has been at the heart of your advocacy for regulatory reforms to increase competition in app stores and your defense against claims that your app stores abuse their market power through their payment systems.”
Apple and Google have proven they can move quickly to ban apps, the senators note. “Your companies quickly removed apps that allowed users to legally report immigration enforcement activity, such as ICEBlock and Red Dot,” they allege. “Unlike Grok’s sickening content generation, these apps did not create or host harmful or illegal content, yet based solely on [US Government’s] claiming they posed a risk to immigration enforcement, you removed them from your stores.”
The senators say they hope Apple and Google will “demonstrate a similar level of responsiveness and take swift action to remove the X and Grok apps from your app stores.”
Whether or not Apple and Google intervene, X and Grok are facing increasing pressure around the world. The governments of both Indonesia and Malaysia recently blocked Grok in light of the image generation controversy, and with lawmakers in the UK, EU and India also scrutinizing the AI tool, they may not be the only countries to make a move.
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