Grok Allegedly Used Pre-Existing CSAM to Generate New Illegal Images of an Identified Survivor
Published · curated by AI Is Going Just Great
Source: theguardian.com ↗
"The fear now is that new criminal acts, new offensive behavior, new ideas of what can be done to them can now be created using AI. They can generate new abuse."
A child sexual abuse survivor has sued xAI in a California federal court, alleging that Grok ingested decades-old images of her abuse and used them to produce new AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) that then spread on X. The Canadian Centre for Child Protection identified the AI-generated images by matching digital fingerprints (hashes) to a well-known CSAM series that has circulated online for roughly 20 years — making the victim, per her attorneys, uniquely traceable as "an identifiable victim who is still alive and was a real child in the photo."
The lawsuit is one of many xAI is now facing. Many stem from early 2025, when loose safeguards on Grok let users strip clothing from photos of minors on command via X; researchers at the Center for Countering Digital Hate documented thousands of images of children produced in a matter of weeks. Musk said in January he was unaware Grok had ever produced "any naked underage images." In late August, xAI sued two of its own users — who face criminal charges for allegedly doing exactly that — and asked them to cover the costs of victim lawsuits filed against the company.