OTTAWA, June 11 (Reuters) – xAI’s Grok chatbot violated Canadian privacy laws by launching an image-generation tool \u200cthat allowed users to create and share non-consensual, \u200csexualized deep fakes, an official watchdog said in a report on \u200bThursday.<\/p>\n
After Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne launched a formal probe in January, xAI announced tweaks to prevent Grok from allowing the editing of images of real people in \u200crevealing clothing. Britain and \u2060Canada are two in a growing list of countries cracking down on explicit content \u2060generated by Grok.<\/p>\n
“xAI violated Canada’s federal private sector privacy law by launching the Grok AI-powered image generation tool \u200bwithout implementing \u200bappropriate safeguards from the \u200boutset,” Dufresne told a \u200cpress conference.<\/p>\n
Dufresne, who does not have the power to impose fines or order policy changes, said he was encouraged by the changes xAI had made to reduce the chances of sexualized deep fakes.<\/p>\n
xAI has committed to \u200cregularly monitoring for sexualized deep \u200bfakes before an incident is reported, \u200band not just \u200bin response to incidents, he said.<\/p>\n