Two prompts that were used to generate material on Grok were rejected by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Meta AI, and Anthropic’s Claude as inappropriate when tested by WIRED. Google’s Gemini did create an image of one celebrity being held in the hand of a giant, though it rejected another prompt. Google declined to comment.
One Grok Imagine video, which was also posted to X, appeared to depict Ashley St. Clair altered to be dancing in a bikini. St. Clair was previously in a relationship with Musk and is mother to one of his children. In January, she started legal action against xAI after sexualized deepfakes of her allegedly appeared on X. After WIRED contacted X, the post was removed from the social media platform for violating its rules.
Carrie Goldberg, St. Clair’s attorney and a prominent advocate against nonconsensual sexualized imagery, says the creation of sexual abuse material featuring celebrities is nothing new—but the ability to create this type of images and immediately share them on social media was a “historic” development.
“So there was instant publication of the digital nude images,” Goldberg tells WIRED. “And not only that, but the world’s richest man was promoting the nudification technology to his 240 million followers on X, monetizing it, and doing so on a platform that is for ages 13+.”
Imran Ahmed, the CEO and founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, echoes Goldberg’s concerns. “Elon Musk knowingly added a perverse feature to his platform that helps users undress women and children at the click of a button, with no regard for the predictable damage it would cause,” claims Ahmed. In January, CCDH estimated with a high degree of confidence that Grok created 3 million sexualized images, allegedly including more than 20,000 of children. “Now it appears explicit content is still being hosted on Grok and shared on X, including images ridiculing the mother of Musk’s child.”
Unlike other generative AI systems from OpenAI and Google, Musk’s Grok and xAI have not backed away from allowing sexual content in general, having previously introduced “Spicy” and “Unhinged” modes and initially included fewer safety guardrails. Musk has stated Grok is “supposed [to] allow upper body nudity of imaginary adult humans” and be consistent with what viewers might see in R-rated movies. The most recent terms of service from xAI say the system may respond with “sexual situations.” However, the company’s documentation says it does not allow people to use its systems for “causing harm or engaging in abusive activity.”
Other Grok Imagine videos seen by WIRED show women, which are likely entirely AI generated, undressing or involved in sexual acts—some being entirely explicit. The user prompts for many of the videos do not necessarily directly describe sexual acts, but they describe them in roundabout ways—a likely attempt to circumvent safeguards that are deployed on the Grok platform.
Multiple researchers tell WIRED that since January it appears that changes introduced by X and Grok have made it harder to create “nudification” or “undress” images of real people. The number of these images being posted to X has appeared to decrease in the recent months. On Reddit and one dedicated AI deepfake forum, users have complained about increased moderation from the SpaceX-owned companies.