Germany plans measures to combat harmful AI image manipulation

Germany's justice ministry plans to present measures in the near future that would allow authorities to ⁠more effectively combat the use of artificial intelligence to manipulate images in ways that violate personal rights, a spokesperson ‍said on Friday.

Grok, the built-in AI chatbot on billionaire Elon Musk's social media site X, has ‌come under investigation in Europe for its ‍so-called "spicy mode", which allows users to generate sexually explicit images.

A Reuters investigation found the chatbot's image generation was being used to create images of women and children in minimal clothing, often without the consent of the individuals depicted.

Germany's media minister urged the European Commission earlier this week to take legal action to stop what he called the "industrialisation of sexual harassment" on X.

Responding to a question about the ⁠controversy at a regularly held government press conference, justice ministry spokesperson Anna-Lena Beckfeld indicated that Germany was preparing to take on the issue in its domestic courts.

"It is unacceptable that manipulation on a large scale is being used for systematic violations of personal rights," she said. "We, therefore, want to ensure that criminal law can be used more ‌effectively to combat this."

The ministry is working to better regulate deepfakes and plans a law against digital violence to support its victims, she told journalists.

"We want to make it easier for them ‍to take direct action against violations of their rights on the internet," Beckfeld said.

The ministry plans to ‍present concrete proposals ‍in the near future, she said, adding ⁠that she could not comment in ‍detail on the plans at this point.

After initially dismissing concerns over Grok's image generation, xAI has now restricted the function to paid subscribers. Musk said last week that anyone using the chatbot to ⁠create illegal ‌content would face the same consequences as uploading such material directly.