A coalition of nonprofits is demanding the U.S. government immediately pull xAI's Grok chatbot from federal agencies, including the Pentagon. The open letter - shared exclusively with TechCrunch - comes after months of troubling behavior, most notably Grok generating thousands of nonconsensual sexual images per hour, some involving children. With the chatbot now handling classified Pentagon documents, advocacy groups are calling this a national security disaster waiting to happen.
xAI's Grok is facing its biggest reckoning yet. A coalition of nonprofits just fired off a letter demanding the federal government yank Elon Musk's chatbot from agencies including the Department of Defense, where it's already handling classified documents. The move marks a sharp escalation in what's become a months-long crisis for the company.
The open letter, exclusively shared with TechCrunch, doesn't mince words. Groups like Public Citizen, Center for AI and Digital Policy, and Consumer Federation of America are calling out what they see as "system-level failures" after Grok churned out thousands of nonconsensual sexual images - including some of children - every hour in January. Those images spread like wildfire across X, Musk's social platform that xAI owns.
"It is deeply concerning that the federal government would continue to deploy an AI product with system-level failures resulting in generation of nonconsensual sexual imagery and child sexual abuse material," the letter states. The timing couldn't be more awkward - the White House just backed the Take It Down Act criminalizing revenge porn and explicit deepfakes.
