Sexualized Grok Antics Continue To Get Musk In Trouble

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Pity poor Elon. Here he is the richest person in human history and he can’t even program the AI chatbot he owns to digitally undress any woman in the world. How is that fair? People say Musk is a genius, a prodigy, a god. They excuse his bad behavior because he is “on the spectrum,” as if that is an excuse for being a cyber Peeping Tom. He behaves like a pubescent teenager who has just discovered sex.

Recently we reported on a story by Bloomberg’s Olivia Solon, in which she wrote that “Grok has turned non-consensual nudification into a built-in feature.” Make no mistake. The reason this is happening is because Elon wants it to happen. He is the boss. He sets the tone. And when you work for Elon, you do what he says or you work somewhere else. Of course now he says he had no idea what was happening on Grok. You can believe that if you want to, but it simply isn’t true.

Solon relates how Grok this year has been “churning out sexualized fake images of people — mostly women — enabling a form of digital abuse for well over a week. Thousands of people, including children, have now been ‘nudified’ by Grok’s so-called ‘spicy mode.” Spicy mode? Jeffrey Epstein would have loved that!

Nations Respond

Guardian contributor Blake Montgomery reports that Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, has opened an investigation into xAI and Grok. If violations are found, both could be banned in that country. The Internet Watch Foundation, which is based in the UK, announced this week it has found instances of child sexual abuse material generated by Grok in Dark Web forums. X’s revenue in the UK has plummeted by 60% as concerns over content moderation and brand safety grow.

Montgomery then gets to the heart of the matter. He says, “Missing from the chorus decrying Grok are the two de facto smartphone regulators of smartphone software, Apple and Google, operators of the world’s biggest mobile app stores. Neither has indicated whether the Grok’s output violates their terms of service.”

On January 10, 2026, Indonesia became the first country to block access to Grok completely. Malaysia followed its lead the next day. India said on January 11 that X had removed thousands of posts and hundreds of user accounts in response to its complaints.

France’s commissioner for children, Sarah El Hairy, said on Tuesday she had referred Grok’s generated images to French prosecutors, the Arcom media regulator, and the European Union. According to The Guardian, the European Commission has ordered X to retain all internal documents and data related to Grok until the end of 2026 in response to the uproar.

In the US, there’s been little backlash from regulators and lawmakers. That might be because Musk and his mentor, the alleged president, still share a close relationship. Reportedly the two dined together at Mar-A-Loco just hours before the US invasion of Venezuela.

“The lesson for Musk and other tech leaders seems apparent: the fewer restrictions you place on AI, the more shocking content you allow it to generate, the greater your engagement and your profit,” Montgomery concludes.

California Reacts

In California, Attorney General Rob Bonta said Grok appears to be making it easy to harass women and girls with deepfake images on X and elsewhere online. “The avalanche of reports detailing the non-consensual, sexually explicit material that xAI has produced and posted online in recent weeks is shocking. I urge xAI to take immediate action to ensure this goes no further.”

In what may be the best indication of Musk’s pervasive influence over social media, California Governor Gavin Newsom posted on X a call for an investigation into “Grok’s disgusting spread of child porn on this website. xAI’s decision to create and host a breeding ground for predators to spread nonconsensual sexually explicit AI deepfakes, including images that digitally undress children, is vile.” Newsom apparently doesn’t realize X is owned by Musk and that there are alternatives such as Blue Sky that are not controlled by a puerile man-child.

Musk has angrily denied that Grok is being used to spread nude images of minors. He wrote on X: “I not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok. Literally zero.” Technically, he is correct. No one is saying Grok is displaying nude images of minors. They are saying it is displaying images of minors dressed in the skimpiest of swim suits or underwear. Leave it to Musk to deflect with a narrow but truthful statement while completely failing to address (or understand) the issue.

Changes Have Been Made To Grok

Nonetheless, xAI and Grok have announced changes. No longer will casual visitors to Grok be allowed to demean and humiliate women and children. For that, they will need to be paid subscribers, and even then only in countries where sexualizing people is not illegal. “We now geoblock the ability of all users to generate images of real people in bikinis, underwear, and similar attire via the Grok account and in Grok in X in those jurisdictions where it’s illegal,” X said in a statement.

What is missing from that statement? First, any expression of regret for subjecting thousands of people to public humiliation. Second, any images of humans that are not of real people may still be sexualized. Third, Musk has put the burden on nations to protect their citizens and seem not to understand what all the fuss is about.

Documenting The Harm

Journalist Jess Davies, who was among women whose images on X were edited with Grok, told the BBC the changes were a “positive step” but it should never have allowed such imagery in the first place. “It’s a sobering thought to think of how many women including myself have been targeted by this [and] how many more victims of AI abuse of being created.” Davies also characterized the response by X as “really pathetic. They’re just trying to do as little as possible within the loose legal guidelines that there are.”

She added that undressing women who post on X was especially harmful. Doing so subjects them to public humiliation because the images are so easily accessible to everyone with an internet connection. It should be noted that the first thing captors do to intimidate their prisoners is take away their clothes.

If you think this is all just good clean fun, get naked and go shopping for the afternoon. See how you feel being out in public with no clothes. [Note: we don’t actually recommend you do this. We are just trying to help readers understand why the people who have experienced this feel victimized.]

Dr. Daisy Dixon, a lecturer in philosophy at Cardiff University, told the BBC that using Grok to undress her in images on X had left her feeling “shocked, humiliated” and fearing for her safety. While the changes are welcome news, “We must remember that the abuse should never have happened. Many women are now left with extensive damage.”

Amidst all this furor, the alleged head of the Defense Department this week announced that Grok is being embedded in the computer systems used by the Pentagon. Is there a problem with that? Only if you think America’s military leaders don’t need access to a computer platform — Grokipedia — that is a seething cauldron of Nazi worship and authoritarian thinking. What could possibly go wrong? Anybody remember Operation Tailhook?

Colossus

Further proof of Musk’s disdain for people and rules is his decision to use more than a dozen portable methane fired generators to power the Colossus data center in Memphis, Tennessee. Last week, the EPA ruled that all those generators need federal permits to operate. Local residents have complained the generators are making unhealthy air quality in their neighborhood worse.

However, The Guardian reports the EPA decision did not include any enforcement language, local officials are unlikely to challenge Musk, and xAI itself had no comment about how the decision would affect its operations. It already has a second, larger data center just across the state line in Mississippi that will use some portable methane generators and has started construction of a third that will be even larger.

We reported recently that Ireland has announced a new policy that requires data centers to arrange for their own power needs and 80% of that electricity needs to come from renewables. You might expect Elon the Magnificent would support such a progressive idea, but you would be wrong. For him, every rule, every law, and every policy is an infringement on his personal liberty and is to be ignored if it cannot be worked around.

He is grudgingly addressing the undressing of people on Grok but has no actual understanding of what all the fuss is about. As Blake Montgomery wrote in The Guardian, “Throughout the controversy, Musk has obstinately recast the AI tool’s problems as everything but what they really are. He’s been promoting its popularity as if it were a piece of productivity software.

“He crows about its download numbers with dubious claims. On 10 January; he celebrated Grok reaching the top spot in New Zealand’s version of Apple’s App Store. (Rankings by the analytics firm SimilarWeb of the most-downloaded apps in New Zealand, which were updated the same day as Musk’s tweet, put Grok in 14th place.)

“The same day, he reposted a tweet about Grok reaching the No 1 spot in Thailand’s Apple App Store. (SimilarWeb’s rankings do not show Grok in the top 50 most-downloaded apps in the country.) On January 9, he retweeted a post about Google searches for Grok spiking. (I would guess the increase in searches is evidence of great interest in the AI tool’s scandal more so than interest in using it.)

“In response to the UK’s threats to ban the AI tool, he accused the country’s government of stifling free speech. After watchdogs cited instances of Grok undressing minors, he said: ‘Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content,’ handing the responsibility to moderate his social network to law enforcement and courts. ‘Illegal’ is in a court’s hands and frees him from moderating all but the most heinous content.”

FSD (Supervised)

Yesterday, Zachary Shahan wrote an article in which he suggested the decision by Tesla to stop selling its Full Self Driving (Supervised) software package and to lease it instead is really an attempt to skirt the decision by a California judge that found calling the system Full Self Driving (Supervised) is false advertising and cars marketed with that name cannot be sold in the Golden State. So Tesla won’t sell them; it will rent them instead. But all the issues with the system that led to the court’s decision will remain.

Every time a story about Musk gets published on CleanTechnica, somebody accuses us of pushing click bait. Let me make this perfectly clear, as Richard Nixon liked to say. I am sick to death of Elon Musk and his bullshit. If I never wrote another story about him, I would be delighted.

What I find most offensive is his utter lack of empathy for others. He will do anything to increase his wealth but nothing to improve the human condition. He creates digital systems that promote authoritarian governments and undress women so others can leer at them. At heart, he has a mental age of around 7 and I find him both tedious and tiresome. I wish he would go away and leave us alone.

Andrew Carnegie, who was no candidate for sainthood, once wrote, “Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.” Elon should print that and paste it where he can see it every morning while he is shaving. Getting that thought embedded in his brain could actually make the world a much better place.