The free-for-all of AI image creation on X had a rude wakeup this week when Nintendo's copyright infringement hunter Tracer, as first reported by the Verge, laid takedown notices on several users who had shared images of Mario built using X's Grok-2 AI model. Tracer sent dozens of users the notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
The Grok AI chatbot on X employs the FLUX.1 model to produce images, but the AI didn't seem to have much of an intellectual property filter when it came out. That led to many images of characters like Mario behaving in ways their parent companies would not be thrilled about seeing. For instance, pictures of the Nintendo mascot drinking and smoking cigarettes were among the most common targets of the DMCA notices.
