Musk's Chatbot Flooded X With Millions of Sexualized Images in Days, New Estimates Show [View all]

Source: NYT

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, created and then publicly shared at least 1.8 million sexualized images of women, according to separate estimates of X data by The New York Times and the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

Starting in late December, users on the social media platform inundated the chatbot’s X account with requests to alter real photos of women and children to remove their clothes, put them in bikinis and pose them in sexual positions, prompting a global outcry from victims and regulators.

In just nine days, Grok posted more than 4.4 million images. A review by The Times conservatively estimated that at least 41 percent of posts, or 1.8 million, most likely contained sexualized imagery of women. A broader analysis by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, using a statistical model, estimated that 65 percent, or just over three million, contained sexualized imagery of men, women or children.

The findings show how quickly Grok spread disturbing images, which earlier prompted governments in Britain, India, Malaysia and the United States to start investigations into whether the images violated local laws. The burst of nonconsensual images in just a few days surpassed collections of sexualized deepfakes, or realistic A.I.-generated images, from other websites, according to The Times’s analysis and experts on online harassment.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/technology/grok-x-ai-elon-musk-deepfakes.html?unlocked_article_code=1.GVA.B7Ht.oernwKrvEHOc&smid=nytcore-ios-share