Prolific Procreator Elon Musk Announces AI App for Kids
The announcement comes after months of shenanigans from Grok, including a fixation on 'white genocide' in South Africa, praise for Adolf Hitler, and several posts where the chatbot referred to itself as 'MechaHitler.'
Grok's current content guidelines state that the chatbot avoids 'generating or engaging with explicit, adult, or inappropriate material,' but users regularly swap tips on how to circumvent these restrictions.
Despite considerable bad press, Musk is working overtime to bolster Grok's standing among the competition, which includes OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, and Anthropic's Claude.
These efforts include the introduction of AI-generated companions earlier this week, including a pornographic anime girl avatar named Ani. Users can toggle between NSFW and Kid Mode when interacting with Musk's companions, but users found that changing those settings had little effect.
Critics have expressed concerns about the impact AI chatbots could have on children. An advisory from Australia's eSafety Commissioner argues that without safeguards, AI companions can expose children to dangerous concepts, leave them dependent on AI for companionship and socially withdrawn, result in them developing unhealthy attitudes toward relationships, put them at heightened risk of sexual abuse as a result of exposure to sexualized conversations, compound the risk of bullying, and put them at risk of financial exploitation.
One Florida mother filed a lawsuit against Character.AI, a company that specializes in AI chatbots based on fictional characters, after her 14-year-old son became obsessed with a chatbot inspired by Daenerys Targaryen, a character from Game of Thrones, and died by suicide.
Her son fell in love with the chatbot, becoming increasingly withdrawn from his real life as he began to spend the bulk of his time conversing with the bot. After sharing his thoughts of suicide with the bot, telling it, 'Maybe we can die together and be free together,' he took his own life.
Earlier this week, Musk—a father of 14 known children—released Grok 4 without industry-standard safety reports that detail an AI model's capabilities, limitations and potential dangers. Musk also announced two new 'Grok for Government' partnerships with the General Services Administration and the Department of Defense.
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