Pressure Builds on xAI as Nearly Three Dozen Attorneys General Urge the Platform To Stop Users From ‘Undressing’ Women

The social media platform X is facing increasing pressure to crack down on its AI chatbot, Grok, with nearly three dozen attorneys general now demanding that the company eliminate the ability of users to create nonconsensual, sexualized images of women.X has been facing domestic and international criticism since users flooded the platform with AI-generated, sexualized images of other individuals, often created without the subject of the picture’s knowledge or consent. The range of the AI-generated content varies from asking Grok to depict women in bikinis to asking it to generate images of them fully nude.A study from a European non-profit, AI Forensics, reviewed 2,000 posts from January 19 and found that the “overwhelming” majority of them included images depicting full nudity or sexual activity. The creation of such images has been referred to as “undressing.”Thirty-five attorneys general — both Republican and Democratic — sent a letter to X raising concerns about “artificial-intelligence produced deepfake nonconsensual intimate images (NCII) of real people, including children.”In a statement on Monday, Pennsylvania’s attorney general, Dave Sunday, said, “The anguish, embarrassment, and devastation resulting from being the subject of a nonconsensual image creation or alteration online cannot be overstated. With this letter, we are standing up for the many individuals already harmed, and those who may be targeted today, tomorrow, or in the future.”The letter noted that there are other AI chatbots that produce such images, but said that Grok “merits special attention given evidence that it both (1) promoted and facilitated the production and public dissemination of such images, and (2) made it all as easy as the click of a button.”The attorneys general said the company has agreed to take steps to remove such images.“Further, you claim to have implemented technical measures to prevent the @Grok account ‘from allowing the editing of images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis.’ But we are concerned that these efforts may not have completely solved the issues,” the letter says. It alleges that Grok “was not only enabling these harms at an enormous scale but seemed to be actually encouraging this behavior by design.”“The company has repeatedly used such capabilities as selling points for Grok. The ability to create nonconsensual intimate images appeared to be a feature, not a bug,” the letter says.The attorneys general are asking X to “take all necessary measures to ensure that Grok is no longer capable of producing NCII,” including images that depict individuals in bikinis, to remove existing images, and suspend users who created them. X is also facing pressure from the European Union, which said it is investigating the platform over the AI-generated images. “The new investigation will assess whether the company properly assessed and mitigated risks associated with the deployment of Grok’s functionalities into X in the EU,” the European Commission said in a statement. The EU investigation and letter from the attorneys general come even after X said it “implemented technological measures to prevent the Grok account from allowing the editing of images of real people in revealing clothing.”Earlier this month, Malaysia and Indonesia became the first countries to block access to Grok due to the “undressing” controversy. However, some users in Malaysia found that they could still access the chatbot by using a VPN.Despite the promised changes, CBS News reports that users in the UK, the EU, and America were still able to create sexualized images of women and children using the stand Grok app.Amid the scrutiny over Grok, X owner Elon Musk appeared to poke fun at the idea of moderating the AI chatbot. He shared two images that appeared to be AI-generated. One depicted women walking on a beach in bikinis with the caption, “Grok 2025.”The other depicted women walking on a beach in burkas with the caption, “Grok 2026 (RIP).”“It’s so hard to get the moderation just right,” Mr. Musk wrote, followed by a crying with laughter emoji.

Pressure Builds on xAI as Nearly Three Dozen Attorneys General Urge the Platform To Stop Users From ‘Undressing’ Women

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