If you use X, you may be aware that many people have recently used the platform's AI feature, Grok, to assist them in creating sexually explicit content. Many people request that the AI chatbot undress a photo of someone they want. While the feature has sparked worldwide outrage, it took quite a long time for xAI and Elon Musk to take actions for the matter.
In the summer of 2025, xAI debuted an image-generator feature with a spicy mode that could generate adult content. In recent weeks, the feature has been used as a "trend" to capture or undress images of random women and men using the platform. It is reported that the chatbot generated approximately 3 million sexualized images over the course of 11 days.
Following widespread criticism, xAI announced that it had implemented technological safeguards to prevent Grok from continuing to edit images of real people in revealing clothing. It stated that the restrictions and measurements would apply to all users, including paid subscribers, and that any sexual content would be strictly prohibited. However, a European non-profit AI forensics organization discovered that Grok could still be used to generate sexualized images of individuals in certain countries even after the restriction announcement. The researcher company also discovered that users can still avoid restrictions by accessing Grok directly from its website rather than through X to create those images.
Fortunately, xAI finally implemented full content blocks a few days later to prevent the creation of images of real people wearing revealing or sexualized clothing, such as bikinis and underwear. The chatbot said, "You cannot reliably generate naked or half-naked images through Grok right now, especially of real people or anything explicit." However, many media outlets and journalists still found it "hard to believe" that xAI and Musk couldn't figure out how to prevent such images in the first place and took that long to come up with a solution.
What’s next?
Because of the chaos, Elon Musk issued an official statement on his account, claiming that the algorithms for both xAI and Grok are extremely dumb and require significant improvement. Elon Musk decided to open-source the X algorithm and publish it on GitHub to share code, allowing users to watch his team "struggle to improve it in real time." Musk has also promised to update the GitHub page every four weeks with developer notes, allowing users to see what changes have been made so far.
The recent events on X have highlighted the importance of developing a strong AI model, especially given AI's limitless potential. Given the ever-changing nature of AI-generated potential, tech platforms must be required to take proactive preventative measures to avoid similar "events" in the future, especially on a scale as large as what happened in X recently. Current AI-generated content regulations are also still patchy, making it difficult to combat "revenge porn" and deepfakes.
