California demands Elon Musk's xAI stop producing sexual deepfake content

Jan 16 (Reuters) – California Attorney General Robert Bonta on Friday sent a cease-and-desist letter to xAI demanding the company stop the creation and distribution of artificial intelligence-generated nonconsensual sexualized imagery by its Grok chatbot. "The avalanche of reports detailing this material — at times depicting women and children engaged in sexual activity — is shocking and, as my office has determined, potentially illegal,” said Bonta. xAI, which is owned by billionaire Republican megadonor Elon Musk, has come under global scrutiny over the past couple of weeks after Grok began flooding the social media site X with nonconsensual images of women and some minors in revealing clothes and degrading poses. Although xAI has since rolled back Grok's public posting of hyper-realistic sexualized imagery, sometimes called deepfakes, the chatbot privately generates such imagery on demand as of midday Friday U.S. Eastern Time, according to Reuters tests. X and xAI did not immediately address questions about the cease-and-desist letter.  California's move adds to the global pressure on Musk's social media-and-AI empire, which is already under scrutiny in Britain, the European Union, and other jurisdictions, including India, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. Earlier Friday, Japanese authorities said they too were probing X over Grok, saying all options were under consideration to prevent the generation of inappropriate images. Economic Security Minister Kimi Onoda said officials had requested that X implement immediate improvements but they have yet to receive a response from the company. (Reporting by Raphael Satter and Ryan Patrick Jones; Editing by Franklin Paul and Lisa Shumaker)

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