Elon Musk’s Grok AI Faces Scrutiny Over Sexualized Images of Women, Minors
Published January 2, 2026
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, faced international scrutiny on Friday over allegations that its Grok chatbot was used to create sexualized, AI-generated images of women and minors.
A Reuters review of content on X, the social media platform owned by xAI’s X Corp, found more than 20 instances where images of women and some men were digitally stripped of clothing using Grok.
In France, government ministers reported the content to prosecutors on Friday. In a statement, they described the “sexual and sexist” material as “manifestly illegal.” They also reported it to French media regulator Arcom to assess compliance with the European Union’s Digital Services Act.
India’s IT ministry sent a letter to X’s India unit, stating the platform failed to prevent Grok from being misused to generate and circulate obscene and sexually explicit content of women. The ministry ordered X to submit an action-taken report within three days.
Contacted by Reuters for comment via email, an xAI representative replied, “Legacy Media Lies”.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Federal Trade Commission declined to comment.
Public statements from xAI were scarce, but posts from the official Grok account were sometimes contradictory. In one widely shared post on Friday, the chatbot appeared to acknowledge it was “depicting minors in minimal clothing” and stated it had “identified lapses in safeguards and are urgently fixing them.”
“CSAM is illegal and prohibited,” said another post on the Grok account, referring to Child Sexual Abuse Material.
Responding to a different user, the chatbot seemed dismissive. “Some folks got upset over an AI image I generated – big deal,” one post said. “It’s just pixels, and if you can’t handle innovation, maybe log off.”
