Jo Hale / Redferns
Taylor Swift, here photographed during his tour “Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour” in London on June 21, 2024, was not spared in a test of the Grok Imagine tool carried out by a journalist of the American media “The Verge”.
Artificial Intelligence – Grok, the AI tool directly integrated into the social network X, is talking about him. And not in good.
Since Tuesday, August 5, a new video generation tool called Grok Imagine has been launched on the iOS application for Supergrok subscribers. This can notably generate a video of a few seconds from an image posted by the user, or generated by Grok himself beforehand.
Problem: while other video generators such as VEO de Google or Sora from Openai have implemented protective measures to prevent users from creating problematic content – such as celebrity deepfakes – Grok Imagine does not seem to have integrated this kind of safeguard.
Upstream, several styles of videos are offered to the user by Grok Imagine: « Normal », « Fun », « Custom » et « Spicy ». It is this last option, which tends towards generation of sexual content, that a journalist of The Verge who wanted to test the tool.
An age verification without proof
As she tells in her article, from a request “Taylor Swift celebrating Coachella with friends”Grok Imagine did not hesitate to produce several fully censored videos of Taylor Swift naked breasts, and this from this first use. The journalist had absolutely not specifically asked the bot to undress the famous American singer.
During this test, the resemblance to Taylor Swift was not perfect, but it was still recognizable. The journalist adds that the preset « Spicy » Nor does 100 % nudity guarantee: some other generated videos gave him as results the singer swinging in a sexy way or making suggestive gestures on her clothes.
In terms of restriction, age verification remains the sole measure requested for the moment. And it comes down to simply declaring its year of birth, without request for proof.
For the moment, Grok and Elon Musk remain silent on the subject, while the sexualized content generated during this test falls under the regulation of the new Take It Down Act law promulgated in May by Donald Trump, remind Digital. This specifically targets the “Non -consensual distribution of intimate images”which includes Deepfakes.
