California AG to probe Musk’s Grok for nonconsensual deepfakes

California’s attorney general said Wednesday that his office has opened a probe into the spread of nonconsensual sexually explicit material by xAI’s Grok artificial intelligence tool.

Attorney General Rob Bonta cited what the company calls Grok’s “spicy mode” in a press release announcing the probe. In addition to “undressing” women, Grok has also been used to distort images of children, including by reportedly producing what a Bonta press release called “photorealistic images of children engaged in sexual activity.”

On Monday, Britain’s communications regulator Ofcom announced that it is investigating Grok over the same activity. On January 2, the Paris Prosecutor’s Office announced its own probe of “the dissemination of sexually explicit ‘deepfakes’, notably featuring minors, generated by Grok, X's artificial intelligence.”

Indonesia and Malaysia said over the weekend that they will cut off access to Grok.

News of California’s investigation coincided with CEO Elon Musk posting on X that he is “not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok. Literally zero.”

“When asked to generate images, it will refuse to produce anything illegal, as the operating principle for Grok is to obey the laws of any given country or state,” Musk wrote.

Musk’s social media comments are his first public response to accounts of Grok’s deepfake problem. He had previously only posted laughing emojis in response to other social media posts detailing the incidents.