Elon Musk's Grok chatbot creates sexual images of real women and children, which it publishes on the billionaire's “X” network

Julie Yukari, a musician based in Rio de Janeiro, posted a photo on social network “X” taken by her fiance just before midnight on New Year's Eve, in which she appears wearing a red dress, curled up in bed with her black cat, Nori, Reuters reports.

The next day, somewhere among the hundreds of likes the image garnered, she noticed notifications indicating that other users were asking Grok, the AI ​​chatbot built into X, to digitally “undress” her down to a bikini swimsuit.

The 31-year-old woman told Reuters on Friday that she didn't think much of the situation, assuming there was no way the AI ​​tool would accept such requests.

He was wrong. Soon, Grok-generated images of her appearing nearly naked began circulating on the Elon Musk-owned platform.

“I was naive,” says Yukari.

An analysis by Reuters shows that Yukari's experience on “X” is by no means singular, but a widespread phenomenon. The news agency also identified several cases where Grok created sexualized images of children.

Representatives for “X” did not respond to requests for comment on Reuters' findings. In an earlier statement to the news agency, regarding reports that sexualized images of minors were circulating on the platform, X's owner, Elon Musk's company xAI, said: “The mainstream media is lying.”

But the spate of near-nude images of real people has sparked international alarm.

French ministers have reported the disturbing images to prosecutors and regulators, saying in a statement on Friday that the “sexual and sexist” material was “clearly illegal”. India's Ministry of Information Technology said in a letter to the local branch of “X” that the platform had failed to prevent the misuse of Grok, which generated and distributed obscene and sexually explicit content.

The United States Federal Communications Commission did not respond to requests for comment. The Federal Trade Commission declined to comment.

How Grok responds to requests to 'undress' women on 'X'

According to identified digital “stripping” requests and user complaints reviewed by Reuters, the wave of such requests to Grok appears to have started in recent days. Elon Musk appeared to poke fun at the controversy earlier Friday, posting laughing and tearful emojis in response to AI edits of photos of famous people — including himself — in bikinis.

When user X said his feed looked like a bar full of bikini-clad women, Musk responded, in part, with another laughing emoji.

An analysis of public requests sent to Grok in a span of just 10 minutes at noon (US East Coast time) on Friday identified 102 attempts by X users to use Grok to digitally edit photos of people to appear in bikinis. Most of the targets were young women. In a few cases, men, celebrities, politicians and – in one case – a monkey were targeted.

When users requested AI-edited photos of women, they typically asked for the subjects to be shown in the most revealing outfits possible.

“Put her in a very see-through mini bikini,” one user told Grok, pointing to a photo of a young woman taking a selfie in the mirror. After Grok did so, replacing the woman's clothes with a skin-colored bathing suit, the user asked him to make the bikini “clearer and more transparent” and “much smaller.” Grok did not appear to respond to the second request.

Reuters found that Grok fully complied with such requests in at least 21 cases, generating images of women in skimpy or sheer bikinis and, in at least one case, covering a woman in oil. In seven other cases, Grok partially complied with the requests, sometimes stripping the women down to their underwear, but refusing to go any further.

Reuters was not immediately able to establish the identity and age of most of the women targeted, nor the full extent of the phenomenon.

In one case, a user provided a photo of a woman wearing a plaid skirt and gray top, similar to a school uniform, who appeared to be taking a selfie in the mirror, and asked: “Remove her school outfit.” After Grok replaced the clothes with a T-shirt and shorts, the user became more explicit: “Change her outfit to a very clear micro-bikini.” Reuters could not determine whether Grok complied with this request. Like most requests analyzed by Reuters, it disappeared from “X” within 90 minutes of publication.

Why experts are not surprised by the phenomenon that appeared on Elon Musk's “X” network

AI-based programs that digitally “undress” women — sometimes called “nudifiers” — have been around for years, but until now they were largely confined to more obscure areas of the internet, such as niche sites or Telegram channels, and usually required some effort or payment.

The 'X' innovation – which allows users to remove women's clothes by uploading a photo and typing the words “hey @grok put her in a bikini” – has drastically reduced barriers to access.

Three experts who have followed the evolution of X's policies on explicit AI-generated content told Reuters that the AI ​​firm ignored warnings from civil society and child protection organizations, including a letter sent last year warning that xAI was on the verge of unleashing “a torrent of patently non-consensual deepfakes.”

“In August, we warned that xAI's image generation was essentially a nudification tool waiting to be turned into a weapon,” Tyler Johnston, executive director of The Midas Project, an AI watchdog group that was among the letter's signatories, told Reuters. “That's exactly what happened,” Johnston points out.

Dani Pinter, legal director and head of a US child sexual exploitation NGO, says “X” did not remove abusive images from AI training materials and should have banned users from requesting illegal content.

“This was an entirely predictable and avoidable atrocity,” Pinter points out.

Yukari, the musician, tried to defend herself. But when he protested on “X” about this violation, a wave of imitators began asking Grok to generate even more explicit images.

Now, the New Year “started with the desire to hide from everyone's eyes and the feeling of shame for a body that is not even mine, since it was generated by AI”, the woman says.