A group of House Democrats sent a letter to tech billionaire Elon Musk on Thursday criticizing him for releasing a “reprehensible” tool with his artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, which has created sexualized deepfakes of real people without their permission or knowledge.
Three Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee included a list of questions for Musk and his AI startup, xAI, about the undressing tool.
“We are deeply concerned about xAI’s refusal to put a stop to the creation of nonconsensual sexualized images, particularly of children,” the lawmakers wrote.
Musk and xAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Musk has said he was unaware that Grok was generating any images of nude minors and has asserted that Grok “will refuse to produce anything illegal.”
Other governments around the world have demanded answers about Grok’s creation of the images and their publication on Musk’s social media app, X. The European Union launched a formal investigation last month, and the United Kingdom has been investigating X. Authorities in Australia, Brazil, Canada, India and elsewhere have also expressed concern.
The Grok image generation tool has prompted numerous objections from users and authorities, among them that it facilitated online harassment and allowed the creation of child sexual abuse material. A U.K. watchdog said dark web users were sharing “criminal imagery” that users said was created by Grok.
At one point last month, Grok was creating thousands of sexualized AI-generated images every hour using the faces of real people and posting them on X, according to an analysis conducted by deepfake researcher Genevieve Oh. One of the targets was Ashley St. Clair, a conservative content creator who has a child with Musk.
In their letter Thursday, the Democrats accused Musk of “inaction” on the subject.
“These obscene posts put women, men, and children at extreme risk of harm,” they wrote. The letter was signed by Reps. Frank Pallone of New Jersey, the ranking Democrat on the committee; Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, the ranking Democrat on one of its subcommittees; and Yvette Clarke of New York, the ranking Democrat on another subcommittee.
The letter asks Musk to respond by March 5 to a list of 11 questions, including when he became aware that people were prompting Grok to generate explicit, nonconsensual images of women or children.
Grok has also received criticism from Republicans. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a co-author of a federal ban on nonconsensual deepfake pornography that became law last year, said last month that many of the Grok-created posts were in “clear violation” of the ban. Cruz also said at the time, though, that he was encouraged that X had announced that it was taking the violations seriously.
The Grok image generator began getting attention in January with reports that it was producing sexualized images of women and minors. After an initial backlash, Musk’s companies restricted some access on X but still allowed people to remove clothing from photos of others on the Grok standalone app and website.
Musk, in a post on X last month, blamed Grok’s users for any issues.
“There may be times when adversarial hacking of Grok prompts does something unexpected,” he wrote. “If that happens, we fix the bug immediately.”
