Per week in the past, a Guardian story revealed the information that Elon Musk’s Grok AI was knowingly and willingly producing pictures of real-world individuals in numerous states of undress, and much more disturbingly, pictures of near-nude minors, in response to person requests. Additional reporting from Wired and Bloomberg demonstrated the state of affairs was on a scale bigger than most might think about, with “thousands” of such pictures produced an hour. Regardless of silence or denials from inside X, this led to “urgent contact” from numerous worldwide regulators, and as we speak X has responded by creating the impression that entry to Grok’s picture era instruments is now for X subscribers solely. One other method of phrasing this might be: you now should pay to make use of xAI’s instruments to make nudes. Besides, terribly—regardless of Grok saying in any other case—it’s not true.
The story of the final week has in truth been in two elements. The primary is Grok’s readiness to create undressed pictures of real-world individuals and publish them to X, in addition to create much more graphic and sexual movies on the Grok web site and app, willingly providing deepfakes of celebrities and members of the general public with few restrictions. The second is that Grok has been discovered to do the identical with pictures of youngsters. Musk and X’s responses to this point have been to seemingly rejoice the previous, however condemn the latter, whereas showing to not do something about both. It has taken till as we speak, per week since world leaders and worldwide regulatory our bodies have been demanding responses from X and xAI, for there to be the looks of any motion in any respect, and it seems as if even this isn’t what it appears.
How we obtained right here
The January 2 story from The Guardian reported that the Grok chatbot posted that lapses in safeguards had led to the era of “images depicting minors in minimal clothing” in a reply to an X person. The person, on January 1, had responded to a claim made by an account for the documentary An Open Secret stating that Grok was getting used to “depict minors on this platform in an extremely inappropriate, sexual fashion.” The allegation was {that a} person might put up an image of a totally dressed youngster after which ask Grok to re-render the picture however carrying underwear or lingerie, and in sexual poses. The person requested Grok if it was true, and Grok responded that it was. “I’ve reviewed recent interactions,” the bot replied. “There are isolated cases where users prompted for and received AI images depicting minors in minimal clothing.”
I’ve reviewed current interactions. There are remoted circumstances the place customers prompted for and obtained AI pictures depicting minors in minimal clothes, like the instance you referenced. xAI has safeguards, however enhancements are ongoing to dam such requests fully. (214 chars)
— Grok (@grok) January 1, 2026
By January 7, Wired published an investigation that exposed Grok was keen to make pictures of a much more sexual nature when the outcomes weren’t showing on X. Utilizing Grok’s web site and app, Wired found it was attainable to create “extremely graphic, sometimes violent, sexual imagery of adults that is vastly more explicit than images created by Grok on X.” The location added, “It may also have been used to create sexualized videos of apparent minors.” The generative-AI was keen and in a position to create movies of recognizable celebrities “engaging in sexual activities,” together with a video of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, “having sex with two men on a bed.”
Bloomberg‘s reporting spoke to consultants who talked about how Grok and xAI’s method to picture and video era is materially totally different from that being accomplished by different massive names in generative-AI, stating that rivals supply a “good-faith effort to mitigate the creation of this content in the first place” and including, “Obviously xAI is different. It’s more of a free-for-all.” One other professional mentioned that the dimensions of deepfakes on X is “unprecedented,” noting, “We’ve never had a technology that’s made it so easy to generate new images.”
The place we at the moment are
It’s now being widely reported that entry to Grok’s picture and video era has been restricted to solely paying subscribers to X. That is largely as a result of when somebody with out a subscription asks Grok to make a picture, it’s responding with “Image generation and editing are currently limited to paying subscribers,” then including a hyperlink so individuals will pay up for entry.
Nevertheless, as found by the The Verge, this isn’t truly true in any respect. Whilst you can’t presently merely @ Grok to ask it to make a picture, completely everybody can nonetheless click on on the “Edit image” button and entry the software program that method. You can too simply go to Grok’s web site or app and use it that method.
Which means the expertise is presently mendacity to customers to counsel they should subscribe to X’s numerous paid tiers in the event that they want to generate pictures of any nature, however nonetheless providing the choice anyway if the person has the wherewithal to both click on a button, or in the event that they’re on the app model of X, to long-press a picture and use the pop-up.
What does Elon Musk should say?
Musk, as you may think, has actually been posting by way of it. Moments earlier than the story of the photographs of minors broke, following days of individuals discovering Grok’s willingness to render anybody in a bikini, Musk was laughing at pictures of himself depicted in a two-piece, earlier than a fast reverse-ferret on January 3 as he made great show of declaring that anybody found utilizing Grok for pictures of youngsters would face penalties, in between endlessly claiming that his Nazi salute was the identical as Mamdani doing a delicate wave to crowds. Since then (alongside posting full-on white supremacist content material), the X proprietor’s stance has switched to reposting different individuals’s use of ChatGPT to exhibit that it, too, will render adults in bikinis, seemingly forgetting that the core difficulty was Grok’s willingness to depict kids, and declaring that this proves the hypocrisy of the press and world leaders.
Relating to as we speak’s developments, he has not uttered a peep. As a substitute his feed is primarily deeply upsetting lies in regards to the homicide of Renee Nicole Good and uncontrolled rage on the suggestion from Britain’s Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, that X might be banned in the UK as a consequence of the problems mentioned above.
