{"id":120518,"date":"2026-01-12T23:14:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T23:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/120518\/"},"modified":"2026-01-12T23:14:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T23:14:14","slug":"texas-house-democrats-call-for-investigation-into-elon-musks-ai-chatbot-on-x-houston-public-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/120518\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas House Democrats call for investigation into Elon Musk\u2019s AI chatbot on X \u2013 Houston Public Media"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t<img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-500845\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/AP24198717480973-1000x667.jpg\" alt=\"SpaceX founder Elon Musk in 2023.\" width=\"1000\" height=\"667\"   data-eio=\"p\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Kirsty Wigglesworth\/AP<\/p>\n<p>Pictured is Elon Musk, the owner of Tesla, SpaceX and the social media platform X, in 2023.<\/p>\n<p>Texas Democrats are calling for an investigation into the artificial intelligence chatbot on X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk, for allegedly <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/legal\/litigation\/grok-says-safeguard-lapses-led-images-minors-minimal-clothing-x-2026-01-02\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">creating sexually explicit depictions of children.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Grok, the AI chatbot, is frequently used by X users to create and alter online images using artificial intelligence. An outside investigative group found Grok created 7,750 sexualized images per hour and at least one nonconsensual image per minute, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/tech\/xai-grok-child-sexualized-photos-59cabffe\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">according to the Wall Street Journal.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Forty-three Democrats in the Texas House of Representatives <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/14PaMYsCsjRqcLnT_4jBnwNhzKEWqMuvH\/view\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">sent a Monday letter<\/a> to the Texas Office of the Attorney General, calling for an investigation into Grok.<\/p>\n<p>Sign up for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.houstonpublicmedia.org\/hellohouston\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Hello, Houston!<\/a> daily newsletter to get local reports like this delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Parents across Texas should be furious: Every day AG Paxton delays is another day Texas children are at risk,&#8221; state Rep. Mihaela Plesa, D-Dallas, who led the effort, said in a news release. &#8220;Grok will undress any photo you give it. A classmate, a coworker, a child. Elon Musk knows this and won&#8217;t stop it. Ken Paxton knows this and hasn&#8217;t acted. Democrats are done waiting. The Attorney General has the power to take immediate action to protect Texas children from further exploitation \u2014 what he lacks is the willingness to apply this law to a Republican mega-donor.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Democrats\u2019 letter does not mention Musk by name. Malaysia and Indonesia became <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2026\/01\/12\/nx-s1-5674660\/malaysia-indonesia-block-grok-ai-deepfakes\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the first countries to block Grok<\/a>. In the United Kingdom, Ofcom, an internet watchdog approved by the government, is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cwy875j28k0o\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">investigating Grok<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Representatives for X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, and the office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton did not immediately return requests for comment. Paxton is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.houstonpublicmedia.org\/articles\/news\/politics\/elections\/2025\/10\/09\/532981\/john-cornyn-ken-paxton-in-statistical-dead-heat-in-gop-primary-for-u-s-senate-from-texas-poll-finds\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">running for U.S. Senate<\/a> against incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, a fellow Republican.<\/p>\n<p>In the 2025 legislative session, Texas lawmakers passed multiple bills regulating artificial intelligence use. Among them, <a href=\"https:\/\/capitol.texas.gov\/BillLookup\/History.aspx?LegSess=89R&amp;Bill=SB20\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Senate Bill 20<\/a>, which took effect in September, creates a criminal penalty for the use of AI to create child pornography.<\/p>\n<p>Another bill from a previous session, <a href=\"https:\/\/capitol.texas.gov\/BillLookup\/History.aspx?LegSess=88R&amp;Bill=HB1181\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">House Bill 1181<\/a>, took effect in 2023, requiring age verification for websites where at least one-third of its content is sexually explicit. Democrats called for investigating whether X was in compliance with that law, which the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed in June 2025 after pushback from sexually explicit websites.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kirsty Wigglesworth\/AP Pictured is Elon Musk, the owner of Tesla, SpaceX and the social media platform X, in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4267,3436,910,8892,52508,66,223,287,3621,27,5600,29,52509,28,22863,1519],"class_list":["post-120518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-business","tag-elon-musk","tag-grok","tag-local","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-technology","tag-texas","tag-texas-democrats","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-house-democrats","tag-texas-news","tag-twitter","tag-x"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}