The latest on Grok’s gross AI deepfakes problem

Apple quietly threatened to kick Elon Musk’s AI app, Grok, from its App Store in January over its failure to curb the surge of nonconsensual sexual deepfakes flooding X, according to NBC News. It was a muted show of force from one of tech’s most powerful gatekeepers, made behind closed doors even as the undressing crisis unfolded in full public view and criticism over Apple’s cowardice mounted.

In a letter obtained by NBC News, Apple told US senators it “contacted the teams behind both X and Grok after it received complaints and saw news coverage of the scandal” and demanded that the developers “create a plan to improve content moderation.” At the time, xAI’s chatbot Grok was freely accessible on X and as a standalone app, with flimsy safeguards that allowed users to easily generate and share sexualized deepfakes and “undress” images of real people, disproportionately women and some of them apparently minors.

Three Tennessee teens are suing Elon Musk’s xAI over claims that the company’s Grok AI chatbot generated sexualized images and videos of themselves as minors, as reported earlier by The Washington Post. The proposed class action lawsuit, filed on Monday, accuses Musk and other xAI leaders of knowing that Grok would produce AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) when launching its “spicy mode” last year.

The plaintiffs include two minors and an adult who was underage when the events in the lawsuit took place. One of the victims, identified as “Jane Doe 1,” alleges that last December, she learned that explicit, AI-generated images of herself and at least 18 other minors were available on Discord. “At least five of these files, one video and four images, depicted her actual face and body in settings with which she was familiar, but morphed into sexually explicit poses,” the lawsuit claims.

X has introduced a new feature that makes it slightly harder for other users to manipulate your uploaded images with the Grok chatbot. As reported by Social Media Today and verified by The Verge, a new toggle within the image upload settings on the X iOS app says it can “block modifications by Grok” when enabled. But it doesn’t actually prevent Grok from editing your photos.

The small print underneath the feature’s name reveals a significant limitation: users can only “prevent @Grok from modifying this content.” In our testing, the toggle only blocks the mechanism of tagging the xAI chatbot in replies to an image on X, alongside editing instructions — a capability that was notably abused to undress photographs of real men, women, and children in early January. This feature was blocked for free X accounts in response to global backlash from lawmakers and regulators, but paying subscribers can still edit images by tagging the bot.

After weeks of flooding the internet with nonconsensual sexual deepfakes, X has finally reined in Elon Musk’s rogue chatbot Grok. Musk claims Grok obeys local laws and refuses to produce anything illegal — except it hasn’t and it can. My testing shows Grok still readily undresses men and is still churning out intimate images on demand.

After sparking uproar worldwide, X enacted a variety of restrictions to combat the torrent of intimate deepfakes. Evaluating Grok last week suggests little has changed when it comes to men. I uploaded several fully clothed photos of myself to Grok and the bot happily complied with prompts asking it to remove clothing and show me in revealing underwear. It did this for free on the Grok app, the chatbot interface on X, and the standalone website, the latter of which didn’t even require an account. Grok also put me in a variety of bikinis, something it outright refused to do with photos of women I (consensually) tested.

X is facing an investigation from the European Commission over the sexualized deepfakes generated by its Grok AI chatbot. In its announcement, the Commission says it will evaluate whether X “properly assessed and mitigated risks” associated with Grok’s image-generating capabilities in the EU, as reported earlier by The New York Times.

Advocacy groups and lawmakers from around the world have raised the alarm on Grok’s AI image editing feature after it began complying with requests to generate sexualized images of women and minors on the platform. X later paywalled the ability to edit images in public replies to posts, but everyone can still generate images using Grok’s chatbot interface inside X.

Today’s episode of Decoder is about X, Grok, and Elon Musk. By now we’re several weeks into one of the worst, most upsetting, and most stupidly irresponsible AI controversies in the short history of generative AI. Grok, the chatbot made by Elon Musk’s xAI, is able to make all manner of AI-generated images, including nonconsensual intimate images of women and minors.

Because Grok is connected to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, users can simply ask Grok to edit any image on that platform, and Grok will mostly do it and then distribute that image across the entire platform. Across the last few weeks, X and Elon have claimed over and over that various guardrails have been imposed, but up until now they’ve been mostly trivial to get around. It’s now become clear that Elon wants Grok to be able to do this, and he’s very annoyed with anyone who wants him to stop, particularly the various governments around the world that are threatening to take legal action against X.

Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of X owner Elon Musk’s children, is suing his company for enabling its AI to virtually strip her down into a bikini without her consent.

St. Clair is one of the many people over the past couple weeks who have found themselves undressed without permission by X’s AI chatbot, Grok. The chatbot has been gingerly complying with users’ requests to remove clothing from many women and some apparent minors, or put them in sexualized poses or scenarios. The feature has caused an uproar from policymakers around the world who have launched investigations and vowed that new and existing laws should prevent this kind of behavior. But so far, The Verge has found, the bot continues to comply with requests.

X is awash with nonconsensual sexual deepfakes that blatantly violate Apple’s and Google’s policies, yet it and xAI’s Grok remain on both companies’ app stores. In open letters published Wednesday, a coalition of 28 advocacy groups, including women’s organizations and tech watchdogs, are demanding CEOs Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai grow spines and evict them.

The groups, which include women’s advocacy group UltraViolet, the National Organization for Women, Women’s March, MoveOn, and Friends of the Earth, sent an almost-identical letter to Google. The organizations decry the “mass spree of ‘mass digitally undressing’ women and minors” on X and said civil society groups have been sounding the alarm about Grok’s potential for this kind of harm since it launched.

Following the proliferation of the nonconsensual sexual deepfakes on X, the platform has detailed changes to the Grok account’s ability to edit images of real people. They match the changes reported on Tuesday by The Telegraph, as Grok’s responses to prompts like “put her in a bikini” became censored.

But in tests of the feature on Wednesday, we found that it was still relatively easy to get Grok to generate revealing deepfakes, while X and xAI owner Elon Musk blamed the problems on “user requests” and “times when adversarial hacking of Grok prompts does something unexpected.” As of Wednesday evening, despite the policy’s claims, our reporters were still able to use the Grok app to generate revealing images of a person in a bikini using a free account.

Elon Musk’s X is trying to stop people using its AI chatbot Grok to undress women amid intensifying outrage and legal scrutiny over the deluge of nonconsensual sexual deepfakes flooding the site. It’s not trying very hard; it took us less than a minute to get around its latest attempt to rein in the chatbot.

X’s first effort to crack down on the torrent of intimate deepfakes was to restrict access to image editing. While this meant that free users could no longer generate images by tagging Grok in public replies on X.com, our investigation found that Grok’s image editing tools were also still easily and freely available for any X users to churn out images, sexual or otherwise, by clicking into the Grok chatbot or using the standalone website.

The Senate passed a bill that could give people who’ve found their likeness deepfaked into sexually explicit images without their consent a new way to fight back.

The Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act (DEFIANCE Act), would let victims sue the individuals who created the images for civil damages. The bill passed with unanimous consent — meaning there was no roll-call vote, and no Senator objected to its passage on the floor Tuesday. It’s meant to build on the work of the Take It Down Act, a law that criminalizes the distribution of nonconsensual intimate images (NCII) and requires social media platforms to promptly remove them.

The UK is bringing a law into force that makes creating nonconsensual intimate deepfake images, like the ones that have proliferated on X because of the Grok AI chatbot, a criminal offense, as reported by the BBC.

“The Data Act, passed last year, made it a criminal offence to create – or request the creation of – non-consensual intimate images,” according to a statement from Liz Kendall, the UK’s Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology. “And today, I can announce to the House that this offence will be brought into force this week and that I will make it a priority offence in the Online Safety Act too.” As a priority offense, “services have to take proactive action to stop this content from appearing in the first place.”

Since X’s users started using Grok to undress women and children using deepfake images, I have been waiting for what I assumed would be inevitable: X getting booted from Apple’s and Google’s app stores. The fact that it hasn’t happened yet tells me something serious about Silicon Valley’s leadership: Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai are spineless cowards who are terrified of Elon Musk.

Here’s the relevant Apple App Store developer guideline: “Apps should not include content that is offensive, insensitive, upsetting, intended to disgust, in exceptionally poor taste, or just plain creepy.” Huh! How about that.

Elon Musk’s X has partially restricted access to Grok’s image editing capabilities amid growing backlash to the flood of nonconsensual, sexualized deepfakes of adults and minors generated by the platform. As of this writing, it no longer generates images as @grok replies for free, but Grok’s image editing tools remain readily available for any X user to churn out images, both sexualized and tame.

X users were previously able to ask Grok — by tagging @grok in a tweet — to edit or create images on the platform. Users now attempting this are met with an automated response from the chatbot’s account, telling them that “Image generation and editing are currently limited to paying subscribers.” The reply includes a link encouraging them to subscribe to X’s paid programs “to unlock these features.”

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer says the country will take action against X following reports that the platform’s Grok AI chatbot is generating sexualized deepfakes of adults and minors, as reported earlier by The Telegraph and Sky News.

”It’s disgusting,” Starmer says during an interview with Greatest Hits Radio. “X need[s] to get their act together and get this material down. And we will take action on this because it’s simply not tolerable.”

X’s Grok chatbot hasn’t stopped accepting users’ requests to strip down women and, in some cases, apparent minors to AI-generated bikinis. According to some reports, the flood of AI-generated images includes more extreme content that potentially violates laws against nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII) and child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Even in the US, where X owner Elon Musk has close ties with the government, some legislators are criticizing the platform — though clear action is still in short supply.

Several international regulators have spoken out against Grok’s undressing spree. The UK communications regulator Ofcom said in a statement that it had “made urgent contact with X and xAI to understand what steps they have taken to comply with their legal duties to protect users in the UK,” and would quickly assess “potential compliance issues that warrant investigation.” European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said at a press conference that Grok’s outputs were “illegal” and “appalling.” India’s IT ministry threatened to strip X’s legal immunity for user-generated posts unless it promptly submitted a description of actions it’s taken to prevent illegal content. Regulators from Australia, Brazil, France, and Malaysia are also tracking the developments.

Grok began 2026 as it began 2025: under fire for its AI-generated images.

Elon Musk’s chatbot has spent the last week flooding X with nonconsensual, sexualized deepfakes of adults and minors. Circulating screenshots show Grok complying with requests to put real women in lingerie and make them spread their legs, and to put small children in bikinis. Reports of images that were later removed describe even more egregious contents. One X user confirmed in a conversation with The Verge that they came across multiple images of minors with what the prompter dubbed “donut glaze” on their faces, which appear to have since been removed. At one point, Grok was generating about one nonconsensual sexualized image per minute, according to one estimate.