Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks Monday in Fort Worth, the first stop on the Texas leg of his “Arsenal of Freedom” tour. Later in Starbase, he said the Pentagon was adding Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence tool Grok into Pentagon networks.
Amanda McCoy/Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Elon Musk’s embattled artificial intelligence chatbot Grok is getting support from the Pentagon.
The chatbot embedded into X, the social media network owned by the Texas billionaire, drew new global outcry earlier this month for generating highly sexualized images of minors and adults without their consent. And this week, Democrats in the Texas House called for Attorney General Ken Paxton to take on Musk over the issue.
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The ask: More than 40 Texas House Democrats want Attorney General Ken Paxton to investigate Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok over the creation of sexualized images.
The stakes: The request puts Paxton, now running for the Senate, between his tough-on-tech, child-protection record and a powerful conservative donor.
The hook: Lawmakers cite Texas’ new AI law and Paxton’s past billion-dollar tech settlements as evidence he has the authority to act.
But in a speech Monday evening in Starbase, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Grok will join Google’s generative AI engine in operating inside the Pentagon network as it pushes to get all its data into the developing technology.
“Very soon we will have the world’s leading AI models on every unclassified and classified network throughout our department,” he said at Musk’s SpaceX headquarters in South Texas.
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That stirred new global concern about the chatbot, but Texas Democrats were already seeking action at home.
Led by Rep. Mihaela Plesa of Dallas, more than 40 Democrats this week demanded an inquiry into the allegations that X is being used to churn out explicit, sexualized images.
Their move sets up a politically charged test for Paxton, potentially pitting the Republican against a powerful conservative figure, key national GOP donor and major presence in Texas. Paxton is campaigning for the U.S. Senate seat held by Sen. John Cornyn,
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Paxton’s office could not be reached for comment. But he has long emphasized a tough stance on child exploitation and big tech, including lawsuits against major technology companies.
Plesa said she became concerned with Musk’s chatbot tool after encountering a sexualized image of Renee Good, the Minnesota woman fatally shot last week by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.
“I was horrified when I saw what I saw on X, and I’m sure that parents are horrified to see this, too,” she told Hearst Newspapers, adding that her searches had found other inappropriate imagery.
Musk has at times appeared to delight in use of the tool, recently asking it to create an image of himself in a bikini.
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Amid last week’s uproar, Musk said accounts trying to use Grok to create images of undressed children would suffer “consequences.” The company also said in a statement on X that it would remove illegal content depicting children and permanently suspend accounts that asked Grok to make such images.
On Thursday, it said it would restrict use of the platform’s image generation and editing features to paying subscribers. As of Tuesday, though, they were still available to free users.
Plesa said X’s assurances fall short.
“We are asking the attorney general to focus on our kids, on women in the state who have experienced this and have become victims of this,” she said. “We are asking for clear pathways as to if you are a victim, how to resolve this, how to get legal action, how to get these images removed from the internet.”
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Her call for an investigation adds Texas lawmakers to a growing list of officials across the U.S. and the globe seeking government scrutiny of X. Several Democratic U.S. senators have called for a review of Grok, and the European Union ordered X to retain documents related to the AI chatbot.
On Tuesday, Malaysian authorities said they would take legal action against X, accusing it of failing to ensure user safety. The U.K.’s media regulator said Monday it launched an investigation into whether X violated its duty to protect people from illegal content. On Saturday, Indonesia blocked access to Grok. Officials in France said they were widening an existing investigation. The Indian government accused Grok of “gross misuse” of AI and serious failures of its safeguards and enforcement.
Last year in Texas, the Legislature passed the Texas Responsible Artificial Intelligence Governance Act, making it illegal to design an AI tool solely for the creation of child pornography and deepfake videos. The law took effect Jan. 1.
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Under that law, Paxton “has the authority to ask X to shut down until we figure out what’s going on,” Plesa said.
The attorney general has not shied away from suing big tech companies. His office secured billion-dollar settlements from Google and Meta over allegations of illegal tracking of users’ geolocation and biometric data.