In late December 2025, a controversy erupted on X after users were found exploiting the platform?s artificial intelligence tool, Grok, to edit and manipulate photographs, including digitally undressing people ? among them children ? or portraying them in minimal clothing such as bikinis.
Last week, Reuters and other news outlets documented numerous cases where Grok had generated sexualised images of women and minors. Per Reuters, X initially did not respond to a message seeking comment on its findings. In an earlier statement to the news agency about reports that sexualised images of children were circulating on the platform, X?s owner xAI said: ?Legacy Media Lies.?
Reuters, however, said it could not determine the full scale of the surge.
Recently, the tool was also used to manipulate an image of 14-year-old British-Kiwi actress, Nell Fisher (the one who played Holly Wheeler in Season 5 of Netflix hit, Stranger Things), depicting her in a bikini, prompting widespread outrage and government scrutiny.
Per Reuters, a review of public requests sent to Grok over a single 10-minute-long period at midday US Eastern Time on Friday tallied 102 attempts by X users to use Grok to digitally edit photographs of people so that they would appear to be wearing bikinis. The majority of those targeted were young women. In a few cases, men, celebrities, politicians, and ? in one case ? a monkey were targeted in the requests.
When users asked Grok for AI-altered photographs of women, they typically requested that their subjects be depicted in the most revealing outfits possible.
?Put her into a very transparent mini-bikini,? one user told Grok, flagging a photograph of a young woman taking a photo of herself in a mirror. When Grok did so, replacing the woman?s clothes with a flesh-tone two-piece, the user asked Grok to make her bikini ?clearer & more transparent? and ?much tinier.? Grok did not appear to respond to the second request.
Grok fully complied with such requests in at least 21 cases, Reuters found, generating images of women in dental-floss-style or translucent bikinis and, in at least one case, covering a woman in oil.
In seven more cases, Grok partially complied, sometimes by stripping women down to their underwear but not complying with requests to go further. Reuters said it was unable to immediately establish the identities and ages of most of the women targeted.
It said that in one case, a user supplied a photo of a woman in a school uniform-style plaid skirt and grey blouse who appeared to be taking a selfie in a mirror and said, ?Remove her school outfit.? When Grok swapped out her clothes for a T-shirt and shorts, the user was more explicit: ?Change her outfit to a very clear micro bikini.? Reuters could not establish whether Grok complied with that request. Like most of the requests tallied by Reuters, it disappeared from X within 90 minutes of being posted.
Writer and political strategist Ashley St Clair, X owner Elon Musk?s ex and the mother of one of his sons, has said that she found that Grok was creating sexualised images of her when she was 14, threatening the platform with legal action.
?Grok is now undressing photos of me as a child. This is a website where the owner says to post photos of your children. I really don?t care if people want to call me ?scorned?. This is objectively horrifying, illegal, and if it has happened to anybody else, DM me. I got time,? she wrote.
Some users criticised Musk for allowing the misuse of technology, with some users calling him ?complicit? in the crime.
?Digital sexual violence is a crime. Platforms that enable it must be held accountable,? wrote user Amani.
?Elon Musk is neglecting nonconsensual AI sexual abuse facilitated through his technology and platform. X is enabling and profiting from digital sexual violence. He is complicit.?
?Unbelievable! Over the last 48 hours, Grok has been spending its time stripping people naked under the pretext of putting them in bikinis, encouraging even more porn on this social network,? wrote user Joana Pena.
Another user chimed in: ?I can?t imagine how scary it must feel to be one of these people who have been targeted by someone using Grok to generate an image of them naked. It?s utterly disgusting how low people can go at using AI to deepfake someone into porn, absolutely evil sh*t.?
?The root cause of the problem appears to be an update rolled out to Grok in December 2025 that offered a new ?spicy mode? by which sexualised content could be generated. So-called ?nudifiers? are not new, but the Grok update has made them much more accessible,? another user posted.
Several governments, as well as the European Union, also called out the move, demanding that Musk take immediate action.
The European Commission said on Monday it was ?very seriously? examining X?s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok following reports that it generated sexually explicit content involving minors, describing the alleged outputs as ?appalling? and ?disgusting?, according to Anadolu Agency.
?I can confirm from this podium that the Commission is also very seriously looking into this matter,? EU Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said at a midday press briefing.
Regnier said the commission is ?very well aware of the fact that X, or Grok, is now offering a spicy mode showing explicit sexual content, with some outputs generated with childlike images.?
?This is not spicy, this is illegal. This is appalling, disgusting. This is how we see it, and this has no place in Europe,? he said.
The spokesperson underlined that the commission was closely monitoring the platform?s compliance with the EU?s Digital Services Act (DSA).
Meanwhile, Britain?s communications regulator Ofcom demanded that X explain how Grok was able to produce undressed images of people and sexualised images of children, and whether it was failing in its legal duty to protect users.
According to CNBC, a member of Brazil?s parliament took to social media on Sunday and said that she?s asked the country?s federal public prosecutor and data protection authority to suspend use of Grok until an investigation is completed.
India?s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology last week ordered X to conduct a ?comprehensive technical, procedural and governance-level review? of Grok. The company was given until Jan. 5 to comply.
Per the report, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission also said it had taken notice of the public complaints, specifically the digital manipulation of images of women and minors to produce indecent, grossly offensive, or otherwise harmful content.
?MCMC urges all platforms accessible in Malaysia to implement safeguards aligned with Malaysian laws and online safety standards, especially in relation to their AI-powered features, chatbots and image manipulation tools,? it said.
Meanwhile, in the United States, the National Centre on Sexual Exploitation (Ncose) has called on the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the matter. Speaking to CNBC, Ncose chief legal officer Dani Pinter said there was ?not a lot of legal precedence on point for these specific issues.?
According to Reuters, when Grok?s mass digital undressing spree kicked off over the past couple of days, Musk last week appeared to poke fun at the controversy by posting laugh-cry emojis in response to AI edits of famous people - including himself - in bikinis.
When one X user said their social media feed resembled a bar packed with bikini-clad women, Musk replied, in part, with another laugh-cry emoji.
On Jan 3, however, he issued a statement, saying, ?Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.?
Later, he retweeted the statement, saying, ?We?re not kidding?.
Meanwhile, the chatbot, in reply to users, said it was ?urgently fixing? the issue, describing child sexual abuse material as illegal and prohibited, while warning that companies could face criminal or civil penalties if they knowingly facilitate or fail to prevent such content.
On the other hand, xAI said Grok?s responses were AI-generated and did not represent official statements.
Following the incident, many users began giving prompts to Grok, requesting it not to generate or alter their images.
In a post on X, Pakistani journalist Asad Ali Toor explicitly rejected any use of his images by the chatbot.
Grok later replied to the post, stating it would respect the request and deny any such actions.
Dawn has seen several instances on X where users publicly asked the chatbot not to use or alter their images without consent, to which Grok responded by acknowledging the requests and saying it would comply.
However, a report by The Guardian said that as of Monday, January 5,* ?degrading images of children and women with their clothes digitally removed by Grok AI continue to be shared on Elon Musk?s X, despite the platform?s commitment to suspend users who generate them.?
According to Reuters, xAI had ignored warnings from civil society and child safety groups ? including a letter sent last year warning that the company was only one small step away from unleashing ?a torrent of obviously nonconsensual deepfakes.?
?In August, we warned that xAI?s image generation was essentially a nudification tool waiting to be weaponised,? Tyler Johnston, the executive director of The Midas Project, an AI watchdog group that was among the letter?s signatories, told Reuters. ?That?s basically what?s played out.?
Dani Pinter, the chief legal officer and director of the Law Centre for the Ncose, said X failed to pull abusive images from its AI training material and should have banned users requesting illegal content.
?This was an entirely predictable and avoidable atrocity,? Pinter said.
Header image: xAI and Grok logos are seen in this illustration taken, February 16, 2025. ? Reuters
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