Apple and Google asked to take down X and Grok apps over ‘sickening’ image generation: here's what you should know

A group of US Senators have now asked Apple and Google to pull down the X and Grok app from its App Store over the chatbot's ‘mass generation nonconsensual sexualized images of women and children.’ The chatbot which is baked deep into the X experience has been in the throws of controversies after the image editing capabilities of the chatbot were exploited by users to digitally remove clothes of women and children.

After the growing criticism of Grok's non-consensual image generation, the chatbot started claiming this week that the image editing feature was being restricted to just paying users. However, the company is yet to clarify if that's the case.

In any case, the three US Senators, Ron Wyden, Ed Markey, and Ben Ray Luján now want Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai to step into the ring and temporarily remove Grok and X app from their App Stores. The senators term Grok's image generation as ‘sickening’ and say that the stores should keep these apps out of them until X's policy violations are addressed.

"We write to ask that you enforce your app stores’ terms of service against X Corp’s X and Grok apps for their mass generation of nonconsensual sexualized images of women and children. X’s generation of these harmful and likely illegal depictions of women and children has shown complete disregard for your stores’ distribution terms." the senators say in their open letter

The senators also claim that X has ‘encouraged’ this behaviour with CEO Elon Musk acknowleding the harrowing trend with ‘laugh-cry emoji reactions.’ They also stated that researchers have recently also discovered Grok app archive that is said to contain around 100 images of potential child sexual abuse materials generated by the chatbot since August.

“There can be no mistake about X’s knowledge, and, at best, negligent response to these trends.” the senators wrote

“Turning a blind eye to X’s egregious behavior would make a mockery of your moderation practices. Indeed, not taking action would undermine your claims in public and in court that your app stores offer a safer user experience than letting users download apps directly to their phones. This principle has been core to your advocacy against legislative reforms to increase app store competition and your defenses to claims that your app stores abuse their market power through their payment systems.” they added