ISTANBUL
US billionaire Elon Musk claimed that critics of his social media company X are seizing on “any excuse for censorship” over its AI chatbot allowing users to create non-consensual deepfake obscene content, including images of both women and children.
"They just want to suppress free speech," Musk wrote on his US-based X platform on Saturday.
After facing a backlash over the obscene digital manipulation feature – which Musk’s xAI company initially denied with the flat response “Legacy Media Lies” – the Grok chatbot on Friday blocked non-subscribers from generating images, limiting the feature to paying users.
But some governments and critics said leaving the digital manipulation open to paying subscribers was no solution at all. Countries and groups worldwide condemned or moved to block the digital manipulation feature.
Indonesia, for instance, has temporarily blocked Grok over the deepfake feature.
The European Commission also urged social media platforms to prevent the creation of illegal content.
Britain condemned X's decision to restrict its AI image creation tool to paying subscribers, saying the move simply turns the ability to generate unlawful images into a “premium service.”
Though Musk has drawn criticism in recent years over his support for extremist political movements, the current denunciation his AI chatbox is facing seems squarely focused on the production of obscene and likely illegal content and its violations of norms of decency.