Under Musk, the Grok disaster was inevitable
Under Musk, the Grok disaster was inevitable

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on dystopian developments in AI, follow Hayden Field. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started You could say it all started with Elon Musk’s AI […]

California AG sends Musk’s xAI a cease-and-desist order over sexual deepfakes

The flood of AI-generated sexual imagery has spurred concern from state and congressional officials alike.

EPA rules that xAI’s natural gas generators were illegally used

Elon Musk’s AI company had installed and operated 35 natural gas turbines without permits, something the EPA now says was illegal.

X is still having issues following an hour-long outage on Friday
X is still having issues following an hour-long outage on Friday

On Friday morning, X and Grok went offline for users around the world on both the websites and apps. Outage reports began spiking on DownDetector around 10:00AM ET, while Cisco’s ThousandEyes outage map noted over 600 X servers around the world that were having problems. Attempts to load the site with either the Twitter.com or […]

Grok undressed the mother of one of Elon Musk’s kids — and now she’s suing
Grok undressed the mother of one of Elon Musk’s kids — and now she’s suing

Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of X owner Elon Musk’s children, is suing his company for enabling its AI to virtually strip her down into a bikini without her consent. St. Clair is one of the many people over the past couple weeks who have found themselves undressed without permission by X’s AI […]

US senators demand answers from X, Meta, Alphabet on sexualized deepfakes

In a letter to the leaders of X, Meta, Alphabet, Snap, Reddit and TikTok, several U.S. senators are demanding the companies provide proof that they have “robust protections and policies” in place, and how they plan to curb the rise of sexualized deepfa…

‘Get Grok Gone’: Advocacy groups demand Apple and Google block X from app stores
‘Get Grok Gone’: Advocacy groups demand Apple and Google block X from app stores

X is awash with nonconsensual sexual deepfakes that blatantly violate Apple’s and Google’s policies, yet it and xAI’s Grok remain on both companies’ app stores. In open letters published Wednesday, a coalition of 28 advocacy groups, including women’s organizations and tech watchdogs, are demanding CEOs Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai grow spines and evict them. […]

X claims it has stopped Grok from undressing people, but of course it hasn’t
X claims it has stopped Grok from undressing people, but of course it hasn’t

Following the proliferation of the nonconsensual sexual deepfakes on X, the platform has detailed changes to the Grok account’s ability to edit images of real people. They match the changes reported on Tuesday by The Telegraph, as Grok’s responses to prompts like “put her in a bikini” became censored. But in tests of the feature […]

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Musk denies awareness of Grok sexual underage images as California AG launches probe

The California attorney general has opened a formal investigation into Elon Musk’s xAI after its chatbot Grok began generating nonconsensual sexual images of real women and even children.

X hasn’t really stopped Grok AI from undressing women in the UK
X hasn’t really stopped Grok AI from undressing women in the UK

Elon Musk’s X is trying to stop people using its AI chatbot Grok to undress women amid intensifying outrage and legal scrutiny over the deluge of nonconsensual sexual deepfakes flooding the site. It’s not trying very hard: it took us less than a minute to get around its latest attempt to rein in the chatbot. […]