Elon Musk's Grok AI faces scrutiny over sexualized images of women and minors

Jan 2 (Reuters) - Elon Musk’s xAI was under international scrutiny over allegations on Friday that it was filling its platform with sexualized, ​AI-generated images of women and minors.

A Reuters review of content on ‌X, xAI's social media platform, found more than 20 cases in which women - and some men - ‌had images digitally stripped of clothing using xAI's flagship chatbot, Grok.

Government ministers in France have reported Grok's content to prosecutors, saying in a statement on Friday that the "sexual and sexist" content was "manifestly illegal." They said they also reported the content to French ⁠media regulator Arcom to ‌see whether it complied with the European Union's Digital Services Act.

India's IT ministry, meanwhile, told X's India unit in a ‍letter that the platform failed to prevent misuse of Grok to generate and circulate obscene and sexually explicit content of women.

It ordered X to submit an action-taken report within ​three days.

Contacted by Reuters for comment by email, an xAI representative replied, "Legacy ‌Media Lies".

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment, while the Federal Trade Commission declined to comment.

With xAI saying little publicly about the explicit content, Grok's posts itself were sometimes contradictory, with the chatbot at one point appearing to acknowledge it was "depicting minors in minimal ⁠clothing" and that it had "identified lapses in safeguards ​and are urgently fixing them" - a response ​that was widely shared on Friday.

"CSAM is illegal and prohibited," said the post on the Grok account, referring to Child Sexual Abuse ‍Material.

Responding to another ⁠user, the chatbot seemed to shrug off the controversy.

"Some folks got upset over an AI image I generated - big deal," said one post. "It's ⁠just pixels, and if you can't handle innovation, maybe log off."

(Reporting by Arnav Mishra and Akash ‌Sriram in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Bipasha Dey; Editing by ‌Timothy Heritage, Chizu Nomiyama and Daniel Wallis)