{"id":239318,"date":"2026-01-18T07:46:42","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T07:46:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/239318\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T07:46:42","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T07:46:42","slug":"california-moves-to-stop-musks-xai-from-generating-sexualised-deepfakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/239318\/","title":{"rendered":"California moves to stop Musk’s xAI from generating sexualised deepfakes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Elon<\/p>\n

\nxAI, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, has come under global scrutiny.
\nPhoto: AFP \/ BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI\n<\/p>\n

California Attorney-General Robert Bonta has sent a cease-and-desist letter to xAI, demanding the company stop the creation and distribution<\/a> of artificial intelligence-generated nonconsensual sexualised imagery by its Grok chatbot.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

Owned by billionaire Republican megadonor Elon Musk, xAI 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<\/a> in revealing clothes and degrading poses.<\/p>\n

Although xAI has since rolled back Grok’s public posting of hyper-realistic sexualised imagery, sometimes called deepfakes, the chatbot privately generates such imagery on demand as of midday Friday, according to Reuters tests.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> in Britain, the European Union and other jurisdictions, including India, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.<\/p>\n

Japanese authorities said they too were probing X over Grok, saying all options were under consideration to prevent the generation of inappropriate images.<\/p>\n

Economic Security Minister Kimi Onoda said officials had requested that X implement immediate improvements, but they had yet to receive a response from the company.<\/p>\n

– Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"xAI, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, has come under global scrutiny. Photo: AFP \/ BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI California Attorney-General…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-239318","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-audio","12":"tag-current-affairs","13":"tag-new-zealand","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-newzealand","16":"tag-nz","17":"tag-podcasts","18":"tag-public-radio","19":"tag-radio-new-zealand","20":"tag-rnz","21":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239318","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=239318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}