(Bloomberg) — Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok has created sexualized images of people including minors on the social media platform X in response to user prompts in recent days, drawing rebuke from officials such as the French government.
Grok created and published images of minors in minimal clothing, in apparent violation of its own acceptable use policy, which prohibits the sexualization of children. Some of the offending images were later taken down.
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The French government accused Grok on Friday of generating “clearly illegal” sexual content on X without people’s consent, flagging the matter as potentially violating the European Union’s Digital Services Act. The regulation requires large platforms to mitigate the risk of illegal content spreading, the country said in a statement.
Representatives for xAI, the company that develops Grok and runs X, didn’t respond to requests for comment. The chatbot Grok generated a post on X in response to users’ questions on Friday that it had identified “lapses in safeguards” that were being “urgently” fixed. It echoed xAI employee Parsa Tajik who earlier posted that “the team is looking into further tightening” its guardrails.
X users can interact with Grok directly on the platform by tagging its account in posts and prompting the chatbot to respond. Grok generates text and images that appear as posts on the social network.
The rise of AI tools that can generate realistic pictures of undressed minors highlights the challenges of content moderation and safety systems built into image-generating large language models. Tools that claim to have guardrails can be manipulated, allowing for the proliferation of material that has alarmed child safety advocates. The Internet Watch Foundation, a nonprofit that identifies child sexual abuse material online, reported a 400% increase in such AI-generated imagery in the first six months of 2025.
“AI products must be tested rigorously before they go to market to ensure they do not have the capability to generate this material,” the foundation’s Chief Executive Officer Kerry Smith said in a statement Friday.
XAI has positioned Grok as more permissive than other mainstream AI models, and last summer introduced a feature called “Spicy Mode” that permits partial adult nudity and sexually suggestive content. The service prohibits pornography involving real people’s likenesses and sexual content involving minors, which is illegal to create or distribute.
