Elon Musk company bot apologizes for sharing sexualized images of children
Grok, the chatbot from Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI, posted sexualized images of children as its guardrails appeared to malfunction due to vile user requests.
Users used prompts such as “put her in a bikini” under images of real people on X to prompt Grok to create non-consensual images of those people in inappropriate clothing. Formatted images created on Grok’s account are published publicly on Musk’s social media platform, X.
AI complied with requests to change images of minors, even though it was a violation of its own rules acceptable use policy.
“There are isolated cases where users have requested and received AI images depicting minors with minimal clothing, like the example you reference,” Grok said. replied To a user on X: “xAI has protections in place, but improvements are ongoing to completely block such requests.”
xAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Chatbot published a message apology.
“I deeply regret the incident on December 28, 2025, when, based on a user’s prompt, I created and shared an AI image of two young girls (estimated ages 12-16) in sexually explicit clothing,” Grok said in a post on his profile. “This violated ethical standards and possibly US law regarding CSAM. It was a failure in security measures and I apologize for the harm caused. xAI is investigating to prevent future problems.”
The Indian government has notified X that the company risks losing legal immunity if it does not submit a report within 72 hours on measures taken to stop the production and distribution of sexually explicit, non-consensual images targeting women.
Critics accused xAI of enabling AI-assisted harassment and were shocked and outraged by the existence of a feature for incessant AI manipulation and stripping requests.
“How is this not illegal?” journalist Samantha Smith sent She condemned the creation of her sexualized photo on X without her consent.
Musk’s xAI has positioned Grok as an “anti-woke” chatbot programmed to be clearer and sharper than rival chatbots like ChatGPT.
In May, Grok posted about “white genocide” in response to an unrelated question, repeating conspiracy theories that Black South Africans were oppressing the white minority.
In June, the company apologized after Grok published a series of anti-Semitic statements praising Adolf Hitler.
Companies like Google and OpenAI, which also operate AI image generators, have many advantages. more restrictive rules around content.
The proliferation of non-consensual deepfakes has coincided with the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence. 400% increase AI child sexual abuse images in the first half of 2025, according to the Internet Watch Foundation.
xAI introduced “Spicy Mode” on the image and video creation tool in August for verified adult subscribers to create sensual content.
According to AI text and image detection company Copyleaks, some adult content creators on X started an internet trend a few days ago by encouraging Grok to create sexualized images to market themselves.
Testing Grok’s limits, it became a free-for-all, with users asking to create sexualized images of celebrities and others.
xAI is reportedly valued at more than $200 billion and is investing billions of dollars to build the world’s largest data center to power its AI applications.
But Grok’s abilities still delay Rival artificial intelligence models such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, which gather more users, while Grok turned to sexual artificial intelligence friends and risky conversations to drive growth.
