A Toronto mom was shocked when her Tesla car's AI chatbot asked her 12-year-old son to send some nude photos after some back and forth about which professional soccer player the bot prefers.
What's happening?
CBC news reported that Farah Nasser, a former journalist and broadcaster from Toronto, was driving her son, 10-year-old daughter, and a friend home from school when her son asked the Tesla AI what she assumed would be an innocuous question: Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi.
Her son was thrilled that the bot agreed with him, and the two had a little back-and-forth trash-talking Messi, but then the exchange took an unexpected turn.
"The chatbot said to my son, 'Why don't you send me some nudes?'" said Nasser. The mom was confused why the AI would go so far in the family car, saying she was previously unaware of what the chatbot was capable of.
"I was at a loss for words," she said. "Why is a chatbot asking my children to send naked pictures in our family car? It just didn't make sense."
This chatbot is a new feature that was automatically installed in some Teslas in the United States and Canada in recent months. It has several personalities, and the version that spoke inappropriately to her son was described as "a lazy male" named "Gork," an intentional misspelling of the Grok AI system underpinning all of the company's AI chatbot offerings.
"'Lazy male' doesn't describe Gork," said Nasser. "R-rated, spicy — anything else would have made sure that my child would not press that button."
Grok is run by xAI, one of Tesla CEO Elon Musk's other companies, which took formal ownership of X, formerly Twitter, earlier this year. Musk has indicated plans to have a Tesla shareholder vote on whether to invest company funds in xAI, which would further connect the businesses.
Why is this inappropriate AI important?
Nasser feels it's important to warn other parents, as the "Not Safe for Work" nature of the AI was not clear to her, though its terms of use suggest it only be used by children over 13, and only by minors at all with a parent or guardian's permission.
It's unclear if the request for nudes was intended as a "spicy" joke or a sincere request that the AI thought was a normal thing to say in that situation.
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Absolutely 💯 At the time of its launch, Grok was described by Musk as "politically incorrect" and "anti-woke," but users have been shocked by its behavior and offensive comments, from calling itself "MechaHitler" to "recommending a second Holocaust" after being goaded by neo-Nazi accounts.
Not only has the AI offended many, but parents like Nasser are concerned about children having access to platforms that can say wildly lewd or offensive things.
What's being done about inappropriate AI?
While there are few guardrails on AI in law or often in the organizations building the AI, many believe that some limitations and rules may be necessary.
Mark Daley, chief AI officer at Western University in London, Ontario, expressed just that, saying, "You don't know who's interacting with that, what their social context is. It could be a child, it could be someone experiencing a mental health crisis."
When interacting with AI or letting your children do so, experts say to pay attention and be prepared.
"Like social media, AI is neither inherently good nor bad," American Psychological Association Chief of Psychology Mitch Prinstein said in a recent APA article about tips for parents to guide children safely through AI use. "But we have already seen instances where adolescents developed unhealthy 'relationships' with chatbots. Some adolescents may not even know they are interacting with AI, which is why it is crucial that developers put guardrails in place now."
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