US senators press X, Meta, Alphabet on sexualized deepfakes

The tech industry’s crisis with nonconsensual, sexualized deepfakes now extends well beyond X.

In a letter sent to the leaders of X, Meta, Alphabet, Snap, Reddit, and TikTok, several U.S. senators are demanding evidence that these companies have “robust protections and policies” in place, along with a clear explanation of how they intend to curb the spread of sexualized deepfakes on their platforms.

The senators also require that all companies retain any documents and information related to the creation, detection, moderation, and monetization of AI-generated sexualized images, as well as any associated policies.

The letter arrives just hours after X announced it had updated Grok to prohibit edits that depict real people in revealing clothing, and restricted image creation and editing via Grok to paying subscribers. (X and xAI operate under the same company umbrella.)

Citing media reports detailing how easily and frequently Grok generated sexualized and nude images of women and children, the senators noted that existing platform guardrails designed to prevent users from posting nonconsensual, sexualized imagery may be insufficient.

“We recognize that many companies maintain policies against non-consensual intimate imagery and sexual exploitation, and that many AI systems claim to block explicit pornography. In practice, however, as seen in the examples above, users are finding ways around these guardrails. Or these guardrails are failing,” the letter states.

Grok — and by extension X — has faced heavy criticism for enabling this trend, but other platforms are not immune.

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Deepfakes first gained traction on Reddit, where a page featuring synthetic porn videos of celebrities went viral before the platform removed it in 2018. Sexualized deepfakes targeting celebrities and politicians have since multiplied on TikTok and YouTube, though they typically originate elsewhere.

Meta’s Oversight Board last year highlighted two cases of explicit AI images of female public figures, and the platform has had nudify apps running ads on its services — though it later sued a company called CrushAI. There have been multiple reports of children spreading deepfakes of classmates on Snapchat. And Telegram, which is not included on the senators’ list, has also become known for hosting bots designed to undress photos of women.

In response to the letter, X pointed to its announcement regarding the Grok update.

“We do not and will not allow any non-consensual intimate media (NCIM) on Reddit, do not offer any tools capable of making it, and take proactive measures to find and remove it,” a Reddit spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “Reddit strictly prohibits NCIM, including depictions that have been faked or AI-generated. We also prohibit soliciting this content from others, sharing links to ‘nudify’ apps, or discussing how to create this content on other platforms,” the spokesperson added.

Alphabet, Snap, TikTok, and Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The letter demands the companies provide:

• Policy definitions of “deepfake” content, “non-consensual intimate imagery,” or similar terms.
• Descriptions of each company’s policies and enforcement approach for non-consensual AI deepfakes of people’s bodies, non-nude pictures, altered clothing, and “virtual undressing.”
• Descriptions of current content policies addressing edited media and explicit content, as well as internal guidance provided to moderators.
• How current policies govern AI tools and image generators in relation to suggestive or intimate content.
• What filters, guardrails, or measures have been implemented to prevent the generation and distribution of deepfakes.
• Which mechanisms the companies use to identify deepfake content and prevent it from being re-uploaded.
• How they prevent users from profiting from such content.
• How the platforms prevent themselves from monetizing non-consensual AI-generated content.
• How the companies’ terms of service enable them to ban or suspend users who post deepfakes.
• What the companies do to notify victims of non-consensual sexual deepfakes.

The letter is signed by Senators Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).

This move comes just a day after xAI’s owner Elon Musk stated that he was “not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok.” Later on Wednesday, California’s attorney general opened an investigation into xAI’s chatbot, following mounting pressure from governments worldwide frustrated by the lack of guardrails around Grok that enabled such incidents.

xAI has maintained that it takes action to remove “illegal content on X, including [CSAM] and non-consensual nudity,” though neither the company nor Musk have addressed why Grok was allowed to generate such edits in the first place.

The problem is not limited to non-consensual manipulated sexualized imagery either. While not all AI-based image generation and editing services allow users to “undress” people, they still make it easy to generate deepfakes. For example, OpenAI’s Sora 2 reportedly allowed users to create explicit videos featuring children; Google’s Nano Banana seemingly generated an image of Charlie Kirk being shot; and racist videos made with Google’s AI video model are garnering millions of views on social media.

The issue becomes even more complex when Chinese image and video generators enter the picture. Many Chinese tech companies and apps — especially those linked to ByteDance — offer easy ways to edit faces, voices, and videos, and those outputs have spread to Western social platforms. China has stronger synthetic content labeling requirements that do not exist at the federal level in the U.S., where people instead rely on fragmented and inconsistently enforced policies from the platforms themselves.

U.S. lawmakers have already passed some legislation aimed at curbing deepfake pornography, but the impact has been limited. The Take It Down Act, which became federal law in May, is intended to criminalize the creation and dissemination of non-consensual, sexualized imagery. However, several provisions in the law make it difficult to hold image-generating platforms accountable, as most of the scrutiny falls on individual users instead.

Meanwhile, a number of states are trying to take matters into their own hands to protect consumers and elections. This week, New York Governor Kathy Hochul proposed laws that would require AI-generated content to be labeled as such, and ban non-consensual deepfakes in specified periods leading up to elections, including depictions of opposition candidates.