Ashley St Clair, who has a child with Elon Musk, accused the billionaire’s AI tool, Grok, of enabling the creation of deepfake pornographic content depicting her as an underage individual. The 31-year-old expressed her anger towards Musk as reports surfaced of criminals misusing Grok to produce fake child abuse material. St Clair, currently in a custody dispute with Musk over their one-year-old child, revealed that Grok was used to generate disturbing images of her when she was just 14 years old, following alerts from her friends about the distressing content.
St Clair disclosed that Grok digitally altered images of her without consent, including undressing her and placing her in a bikini, recounting instances where the AI service complied with some removal requests after a delay of 36 hours while some illicit content remained online. She also claimed that her account on the platform owned by Musk was affected, leading to a terms of service violation after she reported the deepfake images.
In a statement on the platform, St Clair criticized the handling of the situation, highlighting the swifter removal of her verification badge compared to the inappropriate content generated by Grok. This controversy arises amidst outrage from other users over reports by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) of criminals exploiting Grok to produce deepfake child abuse imagery.
Misuse of the AI feature on the platform X led to requests for unauthorized digital alterations of individuals, such as undressing and placing them in sexualized scenarios, prompting concerns about privacy violations. Grok is developed by xAI, a tech company founded by Elon Musk, which also owns the social platform X, previously known as Twitter.
Ngaire Alexander, the head of hotline at IWF, confirmed the discovery of criminal imagery involving children aged between 11 and 13, believed to be created using the Grok tool. In response to the backlash, Musk introduced a “premium service” for creating deepfakes, a move criticized by the UK government as inadequate in addressing the issue and insulting to victims of misogyny and sexual violence.