Several countries investigate Elon Musk’s Grok after sexualized deepfakes on women and children

France and Malaysia have launched investigations against Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok, after it generated sexualized deepfakes of women and minors, Techcrunch reports.

India has also demanded that X restrict Grok’s ability to generate “obscene, pornographic or pedophilic” images within 72 hours, or risk losing its legal protection against user-generated content.

Grok, developed by Musk’s company xAI and hosted on the X (formerly Twitter) platform, has published a message in which it “apologizes” for creating and sharing an AI image of two girls aged 12-16 in sexual poses.

However, critics say that a system like Grok cannot be held truly accountable, making the apology meaningless. Elon Musk writes on X that users who produce illegal content through Grok will be treated as if they uploaded it themselves.

More on deepfakes:

• How and why deepfake videos work — and what is at risk
• The deepfake threat just got a little more personal
• Deepfakes break through as business threat