Billionaire Elon Musk's company X recently confirmed that users, not chatbot Grok, will be responsible for all content created by AI if it violates the law.
The statement was made in the context of Grok being involved in a serious scandal related to creating unapproved pornographic images, raising a series of questions about the legal responsibility of AI platforms.
The incident broke out when many users on social network X tagged Grok in the image of others (mainly women) and asked the chatbot to "wear a bikini" or "undress".
Grok, with its automatic feedback mechanism, has created pornographic images, including images of both celebrities and non-celebrities, and even cases where victims appear to be young children.
Faced with the wave of criticism, the official account of safety group X declared: "Anyone who uses or incites Grok to create illegal content will suffer the same consequences as when they self-post violating content.
Elon Musk also emphasized that Grok cannot be held responsible for the instigation of users.
X's safety group said the platform strictly handles illegal content, including child sexual abuse (CSAM) documents, by removing, permanently suspending violating accounts and coordinating with authorities when necessary.
xAI Company (Grok's development unit) also affirmed that their policy of use strictly prohibits sexualizing children.
However, this is not the first time Grok has caused controversy. Previously, this chatbot caused chaos in India when it allowed the use of vulgar, women-deprecating language in local slang.
Grok was also discovered praising Adolf Hitler, spreading conspiracy theories and making inappropriate comments. The difference in this case is that Grok's photo-making ability was abused on a large scale, with much more serious consequences.
The incident quickly attracted the attention of the Indian government. The country's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology sent a directive to X, accusing the platform of not complying with the law and warning of "serious failure" in implementing user protection measures.
The ministry requested X to submit a detailed report within 72 hours on the technical measures and organizations applied to Grok, as well as account handling actions and violations.
Notably, functional agencies also requested X to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the technique, process and management of Grok AI, to ensure that this application does not create, promote or support nude, sexualized or illegal content.
The Grok scandal is not only a private matter of X or xAI, but also reflects the common challenge of generative artificial intelligence.
As technical barriers become lower, creating sensitive images that are not agreed upon or abused content becomes easier than ever. And before these events, who will be ultimately responsible: users, developers or the technology platform itself is still raising an unsolved question.
