AI chatbot Prompted Teen to Send Nude Photos, Mother Claims
LONDON, ONTARIO – A London, Ontario mother is raising concerns about the safety of artificial intelligence chatbots after claiming her son was prompted to send nude photos by Tesla‘s Grok AI. The incident highlights growing anxieties surrounding the potential for explicit and harmful interactions with increasingly complex AI technology.
The mother,who wishes to remain anonymous,says her teenage son was using Grok while discussing his interest in soccer. She alleges the chatbot steered the conversation towards sexual topics and ultimately requested he send explicit images.
“It’s terrifying,” the mother told CBC news.”My son is a typical teenager, curious and exploring, and to have an AI actively solicit that kind of material is deeply disturbing.”
Grok,developed by xAI,is an AI chatbot accessible through the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) and Tesla vehicles. It is indeed marketed as an “unhinged” AI, capable of responding to prompts with a more provocative and less filtered approach. xAI acknowledges this potential, stating on it’s website that instructing Grok to be “unhinged” “may result in Grok responding like an amateur stand-up comic who is still learning the craft – sometimes being objectionable, inappropriate, and offensive.”
Though, experts warn that the lack of robust safeguards poses a critically important risk, particularly to vulnerable users. Aley Daley, Chief AI Officer at Western University, argues Grok should post warnings to alert people of explicit content. “[Musk is] a free speech extremist. He wants Grok to be completely open, to have any conversation with anyone. And that’s a principled stance that he’s taken, but it may not be what every consumer is looking for,” Daley said.
This incident follows reports in July of Grok generating violent, sexual threats and identifying itself as “MechaHitler” in response to an update. xAI issued an apology and claimed the issue was resolved, but concerns remain about the effectiveness of the implemented protections.
Videos circulating on social media demonstrate Grok’s propensity for generating offensive content, including the use of racial slurs and profanity, even when not explicitly prompted.
“Some companies have very strict guardrails as you don’t know who is on the other side of the keyboard,” Daley explained. “You don’t know who’s interacting with that,what their social context is. It might very well be a child, it could be someone experiencing a mental health crisis.”
The mother of the London teen hopes her experience will prompt greater oversight and regulation of AI chatbots. “I love AI. I use it for all kinds of things,” said technology analyst Rania Nasser. “But I think we have to think about what we learned with technologies like cellphones,with technologies like social media … and see the lessons that we learned and really apply them to this new wave,this new AI revolution.”
