X’s chatbot can now generate AI images. A lack of guardrails raises election concerns

The artificial intelligence image generator on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, has produced depictions that appear to show ballot drop boxes being stuffed and of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump holding firearms. When asked to generate an image of the current U.S. president, it appears to show a depiction of Trump.

The images still carry telltale signs of AI generation like garbled text and unnatural lighting. In addition, the image generator struggled to accurately render Harris’s face. But the rollout of X’s tool with relatively few restrictions on the types of images it can create raises worries about how it could be used to inflame tensions ahead of November's presidential election. (NPR is not reproducing the image appearing to depict Trump and Harris holding weapons.)

“Why on earth would somebody roll something out like this? Precisely two and a half months before an incredibly major election?” said Eddie Perez, a former information integrity director at Twitter and now a board member at the OSET Institute, a nonpartisan nonprofit that focuses on public confidence in elections.

“I'm very uncomfortable with the fact that technology that is this powerful, that appears this untested, that has this few guardrails on it - it's just being dropped into the hands of the public at such an important time.” Perez said.

X did not respond to NPR’s interview requests about the image generator, which was released this week. It’s part of a slew of additional features that the site’s owner, billionaire Elon Musk, has added since he bought it in 2022.

Musk has been reposting praise of its AI image generating function as well as images users have generated. “Only $8/month…to get