Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has expressed outrage over the use of artificial intelligence on Elon Musk‘s X to enable exploitative sexual content.
While the number of reports received by Australia’s eSafety Office remains small, it says there has been a recent increase relating to the use of the X chatbot, Grok, to create sexualised or exploitative imagery.
The online watchdog warned on Friday it would use its powers including removal notices where such material meets the thresholds defined in the Online Safety Act.
‘X, Grok and a wide range of other services are also subject to systemic safety obligations to detect and remove child sexual exploitation material and other unlawful material as part of Australia’s world-leading industry codes and standards,’ it said.
Albanese on Saturday joined a growing list of international leaders including British counterpart Keir Starmer in criticising the social media platform.
‘The use of generative AI to exploit or sexualise people without their consent is abhorrent,’ he told reporters in Canberra.
‘The fact that this tool was used so that people were using its image creation function through Grok is, I think, just completely abhorrent.
Anthony Albanese has expressed outrage over the use of artificial intelligence on X to enable exploitative sexual content
Albanese joins a growing list of international leaders in criticising the social media platform owned by tech billionaire Elon Musk (pictured)
‘It, once again, is an example of social media not showing social responsibility and Australians and indeed, global citizens deserve better.’
The criticism is part of a global backlash to the Grok chatbot that this week prompted X to limit the use of AI to create or edit images by restricting the tool for paid subscribers.
On Friday, Grok was responding to image altering requests with the message: ‘Image generation and editing are currently limited to paying subscribers. You can subscribe to unlock these features.’
Some of the complaints received by the eSafety Office relate to images of adults but others concerned potential child sexual exploitation material, a spokesperson told AAP.
‘The Image Based Abuse reports were received very recently and are still being assessed, they said.
‘In respect of the Illegal and Restricted Content reports, the material did not meet the classification threshold for class 1 child sexual exploitation material.’
As a result, eSafety did not issue removal notices or take enforcement action in relation to those specific complaints.
However, the spokesperson said concerns remained about the increasing use of AI to sexualise or exploit, particularly where children are involved.
Australia’s eSafety Office has received increased reports about the use of the X chatbot, Grok, to create sexualised or exploitative imagery
Australia’s codes and standards required online services to implement systems and processes to safeguard Australians.
The latest stoush comes one year after Musk slammed the Albanese government over its world-first social media ban for teens under-16, which came into effect last month.
‘Seems like a backdoor way to control access to the internet by all Australians,’ Musk captioned a retweet of the PM spruiking the age-limit reforms.
