Elon Musk’s platform X on Wednesday announced measures to prevent its AI chatbot Grok from undressing images of real people, following global backlash over its generation of sexualized photos of women and children.The announcement comes after California’s attorney general launched an investigation into Musk’s xAI — the developer of Grok — over the sexually explicit material and multiple countries either blocked access to the chatbot or launched their own probes.X said it will “geoblock the ability” of all Grok and X users to create images of people in “bikinis, underwear, and similar attire” in those jurisdictions where such actions are deemed illegal.”We have implemented technological measures to prevent the Grok account from allowing the editing of images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis,” X’s safety team said.”This restriction applies to all users, including paid subscribers.”In an “extra layer of protection,” image creation and the ability to edit photos via X’s Grok account was now only available to paid subscribers, the statement added.The European Commission, which acts as the EU’s digital watchdog, earlier said it had taken note of “additional measures X is taking to ban Grok from generating sexualised images of women and children.””We will carefully assess these changes to make sure they effectively protect citizens in the EU,” European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said.- ‘Shocking’ -Pressure had been building on xAI to rein in Grok after its so-called “Spicy Mode” feature allowed users to create sexualized deepfakes using simple text prompts such as “put her in a bikini” or “remove her clothes.””The avalanche of reports detailing the non-consensual, sexually explicit material that xAI has produced and posted online in recent weeks is shocking,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said earlier Wednesday.”We have zero tolerance for the AI-based creation and dissemination of nonconsensual intimate images or of child sexual abuse material.”Bonta said the California investigation would determine whether xAI violated state law after the explicit imagery was “used to harass people across the internet.”California Governor Gavin Newsom said that xAI’s “vile” decision to allow sexually explicit deepfakes to proliferate prompted him to urge the attorney general to hold the company accountable.Further adding pressure onto Musk’s company Wednesday, a coalition of 28 civil society groups submitted open letters to the CEOs of Apple and Google, urging them to ban Grok and X from their app stores amid the surge in sexualized images.Indonesia on Saturday became the first country to block access to Grok entirely, with neighboring Malaysia following the next day.On Thursday, Malaysia’s communications minister said national regulators had found that X’s steps to prevent Grok generating indecent images were “not done in totality”.If X can successfully deactivate and prevent the generation of such online content considered harmful, Malaysia will lift the temporary restriction imposed on Grok, minister Fahmi Fadzil said.India has said X removed thousands of posts and hundreds of user accounts in response to its complaints.And Britain’s Ofcom media regulator said Monday it was opening a probe into whether X failed to comply with UK law over the sexual images.Last week, an analysis of more than 20,000 Grok-generated images by Paris non-profit AI Forensics found that more than half depicted “individuals in minimal attire” — most of them women, and two percent appearing to be minors.

Four crewmembers were expected to splash down on Earth Thursday after a health issue prompted their mission to the International Space Station to be cut a month short — the first such medical evacuation in the orbital lab’s history.A video feed from NASA showed American astronauts Mike Fincke and Zena Cardman, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov and Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui undocking from the ISS at 2220 GMT Wednesday, after five months in space.The US space agency has declined to disclose which crewmember has the health problem or give details about the issue, but it has stressed the return is not an emergency situation.The affected crewmember “was and continues to be in stable condition,” NASA official Rob Navias said Wednesday.The SpaceX Dragon capsule carrying the four crewmembers is scheduled to splash down off the California coast at around 0840 GMT Thursday.”First and foremost, we are all OK. Everyone on board is stable, safe, and well cared for,” Fincke, the pilot of SpaceX Crew-11, said previously on a social media.”This was a deliberate decision to allow the right medical evaluations to happen on the ground, where the full range of diagnostic capability exists. It’s the right call, even if it’s a bit bittersweet,” he added in the post this week.The Crew-11 quartet arrived at the ISS in early August and had been scheduled to stay onboard the space station until they were rotated out in mid-February with the arrival of the next crew.James Polk, NASA’s chief health and medical officer, said “lingering risk” and a “lingering question as to what that diagnosis is” led to the decision to bring back the crew earlier than originally scheduled.American astronaut Chris Williams and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev, who arrived at the station in November aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, remained on the ISS.The Russian Roscosmos space agency operates alongside NASA on the outpost, and the two agencies take turns transporting a citizen of the other country to and from the orbiter — one of the few areas of bilateral cooperation that still endure between the United States and Russia.- Ready for the unexpected – Continuously inhabited since 2000, the International Space Station seeks to showcase multinational cooperation, bringing together Europe, Japan, the United States and Russia.Located some 400 kilometers (248.5 miles) above Earth, the ISS functions as a testbed for research that supports deeper space exploration — including eventual missions to return humans to the Moon and onward to Mars.The four astronauts being evacuated had been trained to handle unexpected medical situations, said Amit Kshatriya, a senior NASA official, praising how they have dealt with the situation.The ISS is set to be decommissioned after 2030, with its orbit gradually lowered until it breaks up in the atmosphere over a remote part of the Pacific Ocean called Point Nemo, a spacecraft graveyard.