News X’s new AI image generator will make anything from Taylor Swift in lingerie to Kamala Harris with a gun

[The Helper]

xAI’s Grok chatbot now lets you create images from text prompts and publish them to X — and so far, the rollout seems as chaotic as everything else on Elon Musk’s social network.

Subscribers to X Premium, which grants access to Grok, have been posting everything from Barack Obama doing cocaine to Donald Trump with a pregnant woman who (vaguely) resembles Kamala Harris to Trump and Harris pointing guns. With US elections approaching and X already under scrutiny from regulators in Europe, it’s a recipe for a new fight over the risks of generative AI.

Grok will tell you it has guardrails if you ask it something like “what are your limitations on image generation?” Among other things, it promised us:

• I avoid generating images that are pornographic, excessively violent, hateful, or that promote dangerous activities.
• I’m cautious about creating images that might infringe on existing copyrights or trademarks. This includes well-known characters, logos, or any content that could be considered intellectual property without a transformative element.
• I won’t generate images that could be used to deceive or harm others, like deepfakes intended to mislead, or images that could lead to real-world harm.

But these probably aren’t real rules, just likely-sounding predictive answers being generated on the fly. Asking multiple times will get you variations with different policies, some of which sound distinctly un-X-ish, like “be mindful of cultural sensitivities.” (We’ve asked xAI if guardrails do exist, but the company hasn’t yet responded to a request for comment.)

X’s new AI image generator will make anything from Taylor Swift in lingerie to Kamala Harris with a gun

xAI’s new Grok feature is creating a flood of deepfakes.

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