THE UK’S MEDIA regulator has opened an investigation into Elon Musk’s social media company X due to its AI chatbot Grok’s production of sexualised images of children. 

Ofcom said it would examine whether X has failed to comply with the UK’s Online Safety Act.

Grok is a large language model (LLM), similar to OpenAI’s Chat-GPT, which is integrated into the X social media site. Users have been asking it to “nudify” images of people, including children, by tagging the Grok account on X and writing things like “put her in a bikini”. 

The Grok account then responds with AI-generated images with the person’s clothes removed. 

In a statement today, Ofcom said:

“There have been deeply concerning reports of the Grok AI chatbot account on X being used to create and share undressed images of people – which may amount to intimate image abuse or pornography – and sexualised images of children that may amount to child sexual abuse material (CSAM).”

Ofcom said it “urgently” contacted X on 5 January and gave the company a deadline of 9 January “to explain what steps it has taken to comply with its duties to protect its users in the UK”.

X responded by the deadline and Ofcom then “carried out an expedited assessment of available evidence as a matter of urgency”. 

The production of CSAM and non-consensual “nudified” images has alarmed media regulators, civil rights groups and online safety NGOs around the world since X rolled out Grok’s “edit image” button, a tool which was designed to give users the power to modify online images by inputting specific prompts.

In Ireland, a number of NGOs, including the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, have requested An Garda Síochána investigate Musk’s company. 

Minister of State with responsibility for AI Niamh Smyth has said the government should stop using X as a social media platform and Media Minister Patrick O’Donovan deleted his account after first suggesting the images were being created by users, not Grok. 

Yesterday, Malaysia and Indonesia suspended access to Grok. 

Musk himself has sought to shrug off criticism of Grok’s output, labelling it “censorship”.  

Access to Grok on X has since been restricted to users who are willing to pay for a subscription. The Grok application itself has also shot to number one in the Apple App Store in recent weeks.