Why Are Grok and X Still Available in App Stores? | EUROtoday

Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok is getting used to flood X with 1000’s of sexualized photographs of adults and obvious minors sporting minimal clothes. Some of this content material seems to not solely violate X’s personal insurance policies, which prohibit sharing unlawful content material comparable to baby sexual abuse materials (CSAM), however can also violate the rules of Apple’s App Store and the Google Play retailer.

Apple and Google each explicitly ban apps containing CSAM, which is illegitimate to host and distribute in lots of nations. The tech giants additionally forbid apps that include pornographic materials or facilitate harassment. The Apple App Store says it doesn’t enable “overtly sexual or pornographic material,” in addition to “defamatory, discriminatory, or mean-spirited content,” particularly if the app is “likely to humiliate, intimidate, or harm a targeted individual or group.” The Google Play retailer bans apps that “contain or promote content associated with sexually predatory behavior, or distribute non-consensual sexual content,” and effectively as packages that “contain or facilitate threats, harassment, or bullying.”

Over the previous two years, Apple and Google eliminated a lot of “nudify” and AI image-generation apps after investigations by the BBC and 404 Media discovered they had been being marketed or used to successfully flip atypical pictures into specific photographs of ladies with out their consent.

But on the time of publication, each the X app and the standalone Grok app stay obtainable in each app shops. Apple, Google, and X didn’t reply to requests for remark. Grok is operated by Musk’s multibillion-dollar synthetic intelligence startup xAI, which additionally didn’t reply to questions from WIRED. In a public assertion printed on January 3, X mentioned that it takes motion in opposition to unlawful content material on its platform, together with CSAM. “Anyone using or prompting Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content,” the corporate warned.

Sloan Thompson, the director of coaching and schooling at EndTAB, a bunch that teaches organizations the best way to stop the unfold of nonconsensual sexual content material, says it’s “absolutely appropriate” for firms like Apple and Google to take motion in opposition to X and Grok.

The quantity of nonconsensual specific photographs on X generated by Grok has exploded over the previous two weeks. One researcher informed Bloomberg that over a 24-hour interval between January 5 and 6, Grok was producing roughly 6,700 photographs each hour they recognized as “sexually suggestive or nudifying.” Another analyst collected greater than 15,000 URLs of photographs that Grok created on X throughout a two-hour interval on December 31. WIRED reviewed roughly one-third of the pictures, and located that lots of them featured ladies wearing revealing clothes. Over 2,500 had been marked as now not obtainable inside per week, whereas virtually 500 had been labeled as “age-restricted adult content.”

Earlier this week, a spokesperson for the European Commission, the governing physique of the European Union, publicly condemned the sexually specific and non-consensual photographs being generated by Grok on X as “illegal” and “appalling,” telling Reuters that such content material “has no place in Europe.”

On Thursday, the EU ordered X to retain all inner paperwork and knowledge regarding Grok till the tip of 2026, extending a previous retention directive, to make sure authorities can entry supplies related to compliance with the EU’s Digital Services Act, although a brand new formal investigation has but to be introduced. Regulators in different nations, together with the UK, India, and Malaysia have additionally mentioned they’re investigating the social media platform.