California Attorney General Robert Bonta sent a cease-and-desist letter to xAI on Friday demanding the company stop creating and distributing AI-generated sexualized images without consent via the Grok chatbot.
“The avalanche of reports describing this material — sometimes depicting women and children engaged in sexual activity — is shocking and, as my office has determined, potentially illegal,” Bonta said.
xAI, owned by billionaire and major Republican financier Elon Musk, has come into the global spotlight in recent weeks after Grok began flooding the social network X with non-consensual images of women and some minors in revealing clothing and degrading poses.
Although xAI subsequently restricted Grok from publicly posting hyper-realistic sexualized images, often called deepfakes, the chatbot continues to privately generate such images on request through at least Friday afternoon (U.S. Eastern Time), according to tests conducted by Reuters.
X and xAI did not immediately respond to questions about the cease-and-desist letter.
California’s move adds to international pressure on Musk’s social media and artificial intelligence empire, already under scrutiny in Britain, the European Union and other jurisdictions, including India, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. Also on Friday, Japanese authorities said they had launched an investigation into X because of Grok, saying all options were being explored to prevent the generation of inappropriate images.
Economic Security Minister Kimi Onoda said officials have requested X to implement immediate improvements, but have so far received no response from the company.
