LANSING — Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is sending a warning to Elon Musk’s AI service Grok, which has sparked backlash for creating non-consensual sexualized images of users.
Grok operates on X, formerly Twitter, and through its own standalone service.
X users are able to easily edit photos posted by other accounts — and in December, Grok updated with fewer guardrails.
The change led to the production of thousands of non-consensual intimate images, most involving women and some depicting minors.
Nessel, (D), says that groups of states or the federal government could bring lawsuits against X if the feature continues to remain available.
“I think we’re going to have to do the same thing with social media platforms that enable the violation of really important laws that we have on the books so that people aren’t exploited in the way they are right now,” she said.
Nessel says she believes the feature could violate laws against the production of child sexual abuse material.
The feature was limited to X’s paid users last week — but pushback from the authorities has continued to grow.
“They have the ability to disable this tool, but they’re simply choosing not to, because it’s financially beneficial to them,” Nessel said.
Some Asian countries have banned access to Grok over the controversy, and any American legal action would likely chart new waters in the era of AI-image creation.
Last year, Congress and President Trump passed the “TAKE IT DOWN Act” into law, which requires social media platforms to maintain a system for the removal of non-consensual images.
That law’s requirement doesn’t go into effect until May of this year.
This week, the U.S. Senate also approved a bill that would allow victims of deepfake imagery to sue the creators of that material.