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Users prompt Elon Musk's Grok AI chatbot to remove clothes in photos then 'apologize' for it

The Register · Matt Rosoff · last updated

Grok, the AI chatbot owned and operated by Elon Musk’s xAI, is facing a firestorm of outrage after users prompted it to create images of naked and scantily clad people from real photographs, some of whom are underage.

Grok is a chatbot originally created by xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup. Earlier this year, xAI acquired X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, which Elon Musk also controls, and folded the platform into his AI startup.

Recently, some X users noticed if they took a photograph that had been posted on the service and prompted Grok to remove the clothing from that photo, it would do so and post the results publicly on X. This may have violated various laws, such as the TAKE IT DOWN Act passed by the US Congress in April and signed into law in May, which “criminalizes the nonconsensual publication of intimate images.”

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