Keir Starmer’s office said simply restricting access to the chatbot visualisation feature was “insulting” to victims of abuse. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s insulting the victims of misogyny and sexual violence.\u201d<\/p>\n
EU digital affairs spokesman Thomas Regnier said \u201cthis doesn\u2019t change our fundamental issue, paid subscription or non-paid subscription. We don\u2019t want to see such images. It\u2019s as simple as that\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019re asking platforms to do is to make sure that their design, that their systems do not allow the generation of such illegal content,\u201d he told reporters.<\/p>\n
The European Commission, which acts as the EU\u2019s digital watchdog, has ordered X to retain all internal documents and data related to Grok until the end of 2026 in response to the uproar.<\/p>\n
Grok, developed by Musk\u2019s start-up xAI and integrated into X, announced the move after the fatal shooting in Minneapolis by an immigration agent on Wednesday (local time), which triggered a wave of AI deepfakes.<\/p>\n
Some X users used Grok to digitally undress an old photo of the victim, as well as a new photo of her body slumped over after the shooting, generating AI images showing her in a bikini.<\/p>\n
Another woman wrongly identified as the victim was also subjected to similar manipulation.<\/p>\n
The fabricated images still appeared to float around X \u2013 and spread to other tech platforms \u2013 on Friday despite the new restriction.<\/p>\n
There was no immediate comment from X on the Minneapolis deepfakes.<\/p>\n
When reached by AFP for comment by email, xAI replied with a terse, automated response: \u201cLegacy Media Lies\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Grok feature has been limited to paying subscribers, but critics say that fails to address deepfake concerns. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cRestricting Grok\u2019s image-generation tools to paying subscribers may help limit scale and curb some misuse, but it doesn\u2019t fully address the safety gaps that allowed nonconsensual and sexualised content to emerge,\u201d said Cliff Steinhauer, from the nonprofit National Cybersecurity Alliance.<\/p>\n
\u201cAccess restrictions alone aren\u2019t a comprehensive safeguard, as motivated bad actors may still find ways around them, and meaningful user protection ultimately needs to be grounded in how these tools are designed and governed.\u201d<\/p>\n
France, Malaysia and India have also previously pushed back against the use of Grok to alter photos of women and children after a flood of user complaints, announcing investigations or calling on Musk\u2019s company for swift takedowns of the explicit images.<\/p>\n
Britain\u2019s communications regulator Ofcom announced earlier this week it had made \u201curgent contact with X and xAI\u201d over the Grok feature, warning it could open an investigation depending on their response.<\/p>\n
On Friday, an Ofcom spokesperson said the regulator had \u201creceived a response\u201d and was now \u201cundertaking an expedited assessment as a matter of urgency\u201d.<\/p>\n
Last week, in response to a post about the explicit images, Musk said anyone using Grok to \u201cmake illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content\u201d.<\/p>\n
But he appeared to make light of the controversy in a separate post, adding laughing emojis as he reshared to his 232 million followers on X a post featuring a toaster wrapped in a bikini.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrok can put a bikini on everything,\u201d the original post said.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Keir Starmer’s office said simply restricting access to the chatbot visualisation feature was “insulting” to victims of abuse.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233250,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[1443,3255,74,365,363,364,104686,12974,9473,10709,10039,125551,43361,127,17448,6446,12513,5071,2079,7710,305,17518,5606,53946,17444,117,111,139,69,10711,1523,17096,22948,2687,138287,41401,23848,370,145,8238],"class_list":["post-233249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-about","tag-address","tag-after","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-campaigners","tag-change","tag-chatbot","tag-concerns","tag-controversial","tag-creation","tag-deepfakes","tag-despite","tag-elon","tag-european","tag-failed","tag-feature","tag-fire","tag-grok","tag-have","tag-image","tag-images","tag-limits","tag-musks","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-officials","tag-over","tag-paying","tag-restricted","tag-saying","tag-sexualised","tag-slammed","tag-subscribers","tag-tech","tag-technology","tag-under"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}