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WASHINGTON: Three Democratic U.S. senators are calling on Apple and Alphabet\u2019s 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n 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 \u201cmust remove these apps from the app stores until X\u2019s policy violations are addressed.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n The senators\u2019 letter, first reported by NBC News, noted that Google has terms of service that bar app makers from \u201ccreating, uploading, or distributing content that facilitates the exploitation or abuse of children.\u201d Apple\u2019s terms of service, they said, bar \u201csexual or pornographic material.\u201d<\/p>\n The senators noted that, in the past, both tech giants have moved swiftly to kick offending apps off their platforms.<\/p>\n \u201cTurning a blind eye to X\u2019s egregious behavior would make a mockery of your moderation practices,\u201d the letter said.<\/p>\n 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 \u201cagainst illegal content on X, including Child Sexual Abuse Material.\u201d<\/p>\n X\u2019s parent company xAI did not answer specific questions about the letter or Grok\u2019s explicit output, sending only its generic response that cited unspecified \u201cLegacy Media Lies.\u201d<\/p>\n SENATOR SAYS MUSK PROFITS FROM INDECENT IMAGES<\/p>\n Musk has responded with laugh-cry emojis to AI-altered photographs of prominent people in bikinis and posted several times a day about X\u2019s popularity. At one point, he blamed users for unlawful content generated by his chatbot, saying: \u201canyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.\u201d<\/p>\n With pressure mounting on Friday, Musk\u2019s xAI, which operates Grok and owns X, appeared to be imposing some restrictions on Grok\u2019s public image generation.<\/p>\n Public requests from X users to digitally strip women down to bikinis were met with a message saying image editing functionality was \u201ccurrently limited to paying subscribers.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Reuters could not establish the extent to which the changes had curbed generation of nonconsensual imagery, if at all.<\/p>\n Wyden said that the tweaks did not dampen his concern.<\/p>\n \u201cAll X\u2019s 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,\u201d he wrote in an email.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n