FILE PHOTO: A 3D printed Google logo is placed on the Apple Macbook in this illustration created on April 12, 2020. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
WASHINGTON, Jan 9 (Reuters) - Three Democratic U.S. senators are calling on Apple and Alphabet's Google to remove X and its built-in artificial intelligence chatbot Grok from their app stores, citing the spread of nonconsensual sexual images of women and minors on the platform.
In a letter published on Friday, senators Ron Wyden of Oregon, Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico and Edward Markey of Massachusetts said Google and Apple "must remove these apps from the app stores until X's policy violations are addressed."
X, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, has been under fire from officials around the world since last week, when Grok began flooding the site with AI-generated nonconsensual images of women and children wearing revealing bikinis, see-through underwear, or in degrading, violent, or sexualized poses.
The senators' letter, first reported by NBC News, noted that Google has terms of service that bar app makers from "creating, uploading, or distributing content that facilitates the exploitation or abuse of children." Apple's terms of service, they said, bar "sexual or pornographic material."
The senators noted that, in the past, both tech giants have moved swiftly to kick offending apps off their platforms.
"Turning a blind eye to X’s egregious behavior would make a mockery of your moderation practices," the letter said.
Google and Apple did not immediately return messages seeking comment. X referred Reuters to a January 2 post in which it said the site takes action "against illegal content on X, including Child Sexual Abuse Material."
X's parent company xAI did not answer specific questions about the letter or Grok's explicit output, sending only its generic response that cited unspecified "Legacy Media Lies."
SENATOR SAYS MUSK PROFITS FROM INDECENT IMAGES
Musk has responded with laugh-cry emojis to AI-altered photographs of prominent people in bikinis and posted several times a day about X's popularity. At one point, he blamed users for unlawful content generated by hischatbot, saying: "anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content."
On Friday, British technology minister Liz Kendall said she expected media regulator Ofcom to take action over X “in days, not weeks," noting that the watchdog was empowered to issue hefty fines or even block services from Britain if they failed to comply.
"X needs to get a grip and get this material down," she said.
With pressure mounting, Musk's xAI, which operates Grok and owns X, appeared to be imposing some restrictions on Grok's public image generation. Public requests from X users to digitally strip women down to bikinis were met with a message saying image editing functionality was "currently limited to paying subscribers."
X users were still able to create sexualized images using the Grok tab and then post the images to X. The standalone Grok app, which operates separately from X, was also still allowing users to generate images without a subscription.
Reuters could not establish the extent to which the changes had curbed generation of nonconsensual imagery, if at all.
Wyden said that the tweaks did not dampen his concern.
"All X’s changes do is make some of its users pay for the privilege of producing horrific images on the X app, while Musk profits from the abuse of children," he wrote in an email.
(Reporting by Raphael Satter and AJ Vicens; Additional reporting by Muvija M and Jaspreet Singh; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, David Gregorio and Joe Bavier)
