California’s governor and attorney general said on Wednesday that they were demanding answers from Elon Musk’s xAI after the billionaire said he was not aware of any “naked underage images” generated by its artificial intelligence chatbot, called Grok.

“We’re demanding immediate answers from xAI on their plan to stop the creation & spread of this content,” California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, wrote on X. Earlier, Governor Gavin Newsom wrote a post calling on Bonta “to immediately investigate the company and hold xAI accountable.”

The comments from Newsom and Bonta were the most serious so far by any U.S. official addressing the explosion of AI-generated nonconsensual sexualized imagery on Musk’s X platform. In Europe and Asia, several officials have expressed outrage and disgust.

Early this year, hyper-realistic images of women processed to look like they were in microscopic bikinis, in degrading poses, or covered in bruises flooded X, the site formerly known as Twitter. In some cases, minors were digitally stripped down to swimwear.

Musk Publicly Laughed Off Controversy

At first, Musk publicly laughed off the controversy, posting humorous emojis in response to other users’ comments about the influx of sexualized photos. More recently, X has said it treats reports of child sexual abuse material seriously and polices it vigorously. On Wednesday, Musk said he was not aware of any “naked underage images” generated by Grok.

“I not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok. Literally zero,” Musk said in an X post. X did not immediately respond to questions about the California announcement and Musk’s comments.

xAI did not answer questions from Reuters about the announcement by California officials or Musk’s statement that he was unaware of sexualized imagery of minors. The company responded to the questions with an email re-stating its generic reply to press inquiries: “Legacy Media Lies.”

The California move adds to the pressure Musk is facing in the U.S. and around the world. Lawmakers and advocacy groups have called for Apple and Google to drop Grok from app stores.

Government officials have threatened action in Europe and the United Kingdom, while bans on Grok are already in place in Malaysia and Indonesia.

Last week, X curtailed Grok’s ability to generate or edit images publicly for many users, but Grok was still privately producing sexually charged images on demand as of Wednesday, Reuters found.

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(Reporting by Raphael Satter in Washington and Akash Sriram in Bengaluru, Editing by Franklin Paul and David Gregorio)