Privacy Commissioner Says Grok Deepfakes Violated Canadian Privacy Law

The federal privacy commissioner says sexual deepfakes created by Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbot violated Canada’s privacy law.

The watchdog says Grok’s AI image generation tool was launched without adequate safeguards and didn’t properly consider harms to privacy.

The commissioner launched an investigation in January to examine the proliferation of sexualized deepfakes created by Grok and shared on the X social media platform.

The privacy commissioner says Grok was being used to generate millions of sexualized deepfakes.

The investigation looked at whether the companies involved are complying with privacy law and whether they obtained “valid consent” to collect, use and disclose personal information to create deepfakes, including explicit content.

The wave of images drew a global backlash, with the U.K., the European Union and California launching investigations of their own.