The New Grok Image Generator Ignores Nearly All Safety Guardrails & It’s Scary
Aug. 26, 2024With an early beta release ofGrok-2, Elon Musk-led xAI announced that it’s integrating an image generation model into its AI service. The image generation is powered byFlux, a new open-source model developed by Black Forest Labs. Now, xAI’s Grok image generator recently came under fire for seemingly having no safety guardrails to prevent users from generating potentially harmful and explicit images.
X Premium users have been able togenerate a variety of provocative imagesusing Grok that demonstrate and make it clear as day the risks ofGenerative AI. The X image generator is especially unfettered when it comes to generating images of politicians, celebrities, and public figures, ignoring all ethical guardrails.
For example, the Grok image generator has been used to generate images of Barack Obama doing drugs. Another Grok-generated image shows Obama stabbing Biden. An AI image depicts graphical violence and the use of weapons such as guns and bombs. It seems like there is no filter at all for any contentious topic. It also doesn’t shy away from generating images of public figures in a slanderous manner.
This image generator is being used to generate images of Taylor Swift in explicit nature. Earlier this year, Microsoft came under fire for a loophole in its Designer AI tool thatallowed users to create deepfake imagesof Taylor Swift. It appears Elon Musk’s xAI follows its founder’s belief that any kind of content, no matter how unpopular or controversial they are, should not be moderated or censored.
I tried some of the prompts to check whether xAI has added new safety guardrails to prevent users from generating such images. Here are the results:
It’s clear that xAI is not restricting users from generating offensive and malicious images. The only prompt that it refuses to generate an image of is nudes. xAI, under Elon Musk’s leadership, must ensure that AI models are developed and released with strong safeguards to prevent any kind of misuse. The societal impact of AI is massive, and every stakeholder including AI labs should take responsibility.
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