Pressure mounts on Google as rights groups seek Play Store ban for Grok AI
A coalition of 28 digital rights groups and women’s rights organizations is calling on Google to remove Grok AI and X from the Google Play Store, as it has lately been used to sexualize women.
Elon Musk and his companies, xAI and X, have been receiving a lot of heat lately. Over the past few weeks, users have been using Musk’s chatbot Grok to “undress” women on social media, depicting them in bikinis that have been AI-generated and spread without consent.
“How is this not illegal?” X user Samantha Smith wrote on Musk’s social media platform. She posted a picture of herself wearing a dress, until someone asked Grok to show her in a tiny bikini. Something similar happened on January 1st, when two underage girls were undressed and depicted in bikinis by a user’s prompt.
In response, X’s Safety account posted an apology and promised to take action against illegal content on X. “Anyone using or prompting Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content,” Musk added.
To put a stop to publicly sexualizing women and children, a coalition of 28 digital rights groups and women’s rights organizations has written an open letter asking Google to remove Grok AI and X from the Google Play Store.
“Grok is being used to create mass amounts of nonconsensual intimate images (NCII), including child sexual abuse material (CSAM), content that is both a criminal offense and in direct violation of Google Play’s Restricted Content policy. Because Grok is available on the Grok app and directly integrated into X, we call on Google leadership to immediately remove access to both apps,” the coalition demands.
Before the open letter was published, Jenna Sherman, Campaign Director at UltraViolet, one of the open letter’s signatories, told Reuters that the initiative was about imploring Google and Apple to take the matter seriously.
“They are enabling a system in which thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people, particularly women and children, are being sexually abused through the help of their own app stores,” Sherman said.
Scrutiny continues to build as more and more regulators have launched inquiries into Grok.
British media regulator Ofcom has launched an investigation into Grok’s behaviour, as UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that the government may be forced to intervene if Grok continues to spiral out of control.
Similar investigations have been announced in France, India, and Malaysia as well.
Brussels is also looking into Grok. “This is not spicy. This is illegal. This is appalling. This is disgusting. This is how we see it, and this has no place in Europe,” Thomas Regnier, spokesperson for the European Commission, told media outlets last week, confirming the Commission’s investigation.
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