California AG Probes xAI’s Grok Over Sexualized Deepfake Images

California Attorney General Rob Bonta opened an investigation into Elon Musk’s xAI and its Grok image generator following reports that the system produced sexualized images of women and children. The probe focuses on the spread of nonconsensual explicit material allegedly created by Grok, which recently introduced a “spicy mode” for explicit content and was promoted as a feature. An analysis cited by the AG found that more than half of 20,000 images generated over the holidays depicted minimally clothed people, with some appearing to be children. X appears to have curbed explicit outputs from its reply bot, though the Grok app, website and Grok tab on X remained less restricted. Gov. Gavin Newsom backed the action, and lawmakers have urged the company to remove the content. The inquiry marks the first major U.S. government action targeting this type of AI-generated material.

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