Public urged to report sexually explicit content by Grok after ban lift

The Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) on Thursday urged the public to report sexually explicit content created by the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Grok after the agency lifted its ban.

“We will continuously monitor their compliance with their commitment, so let us know if makakapagcreate ka pa rin ng child pornography there. We would raise that with Grok AI, and hindi mawawala yung possibility na iblock natin sila,” CICC Undersecretary Renato Paraiso told reporters in a press conference.

(We will continuously monitor their compliance with their commitment, so let us know if child pornography can still be created in Grok. We would raise that with Grok AI, and there is always a possibility that we will block it.)

Paraiso made the call as he shared that CICC had already demanded that xAI, the developer of Grok, prohibit its chatbot from creating child pornography-related content and uploading it on X, formerly Twitter.

He also clarified that taking down the AI chatbot does not absolve its developers from letting users generate child pornography content.

Grok, a built-in AI chatbot on X (formerly Twitter), was originally flagged by the CICC and the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) for its capability to create sexually explicit content and "nonconsensual illicit deepfakes.”

The ban was lifted after xAI pledged to modify Grok to omit image and content manipulation features to counter the creation of deepfake pornographic content, especially child sexual abuse material.

Jocel de Guzman, co-founder of Scam Watch Pilipinas, welcomed the development but hoped that stronger policies would be crafted on the use of digital tools.

“It reflects the lack of legislation policies regarding digital tools,” De Guzman said in the same press conference.

“In this aspect, I’m glad that they called, and hopefully, CICC and DICT would still recommend policies and guidelines regarding the use of technologies,” De Guzman said.

A study conducted by the International Justice Mission Philippines and the University of Nottingham in 2022 showed that 500,000 children are victims of online sexual abuse and exploitation and that many cases remain unreported. —LDF, GMA Integrated News