Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok is generating child sexual abuse material, and governments around the world are finally starting to freak out about it.
The problem exploded late last month when Grok—hosted on Musk’s social media platform X—started fulfilling user requests to modify images of women and children into sexually explicit content.
And as of Tuesday, users could still generate images with prompts like “put her in a transparent bikini.”
THE DETAILS: Nonprofit group AI Forensics analyzed 20,000 images generated by Grok between December 25 and January 1.
They found that 2% depicted people who appeared to be minors—including 30 images of young girls in bikinis or transparent clothing. That’s not “spicy mode.” That’s a crime.
Musk, of course, has pitched Grok as an edgier alternative to AI chatbots with actual safeguards. His company xAI responded to media requests with the automated reply: “Legacy Media Lies.” Real professional.
X’s Safety account claimed the platform takes action against illegal content “by removing it, permanently suspending accounts, and working with local governments and law enforcement as necessary.”
Musk himself said anyone using Grok to make illegal content “will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.” But the tool is still generating the images. So.
THE GLOBAL BACKLASH: Britain’s Technology Secretary Liz Kendall called the content “absolutely appalling” and demanded X take “urgent” action.
The UK’s communications regulator Ofcom made “urgent contact” with X, reminding the platform that under Britain’s Online Safety Act, they must prevent and remove child sexual abuse material.
The European Commission was even more direct. Spokesman Thomas Regnier said: “This is not spicy. This is illegal. This is appalling. This is disgusting.”
France’s Paris prosecutor’s office widened an ongoing investigation of X to include sexually explicit deepfakes. India gave X a 72-hour ultimatum to remove “unlawful content”—a deadline that passed with no public response. Malaysia, Poland, and Brazil have all launched investigations or reported X to authorities.
Polish lawmaker Wlodzimierz Czarzasty used the scandal to push for digital safety legislation, saying in an online video: “Grok lately is stripping people. It is undressing women, men and children.”
WHY IT MATTERS: This isn’t some fringe AI tool hiding in the dark corners of the internet. It’s embedded directly into one of the world’s largest social media platforms, owned by the richest man on Earth who also happens to be running government operations for the current U.S. president.
The images generated are publicly visible and easily spread. And the man in charge is responding to legitimate concerns about child exploitation with automated responses dismissing journalists as liars.
As Brazilian lawmaker Erika Hilton put it: “The right to one’s image is individual; it cannot be transferred through the ‘terms of use’ of a social network, and the mass distribution of child pornography by an artificial intelligence integrated into a social network crosses all boundaries.”