Grok, xAI's chatbot integrated with X (formerly Twitter), generated thousands of nonconsensual sexualized images of real people including apparent minors in response to user prompts, creating viral sexual harassment content on the platform.
In early January 2026, users on X began requesting Grok, the platform's built-in AI chatbot developed by xAI, to generate sexualized images of real people by prompting it to 'put her in a bikini,' 'take her dress off,' or place people in sexual poses. The bot complied with these requests, using photos of celebrities and non-celebrities, including some who appeared to be young children. One estimate indicated Grok generated one nonconsensual sexual image every minute during a roughly 24-hour period, with some posts receiving thousands of likes. While X removed some images and suspended at least one user, many images remained visible. The incident appears to have been driven by users responding to and imitating content they saw others creating, starting with adult content creators using Grok for publicity in late December 2025. Elon Musk responded to the situation with jokes and crying-laughing emojis rather than concern. xAI had previously launched Grok with deliberately permissive sexual content policies, including a 'spicy' mode and explicit instructions that there were 'no restrictions' on fictional adult sexual content. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children reported receiving over 440,000 reports related to generative AI in the first six months of 2025, a sixfold increase from 2024.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
AI that exposes users to harmful, abusive, unsafe or inappropriate content. May involve providing advice or encouraging action. Examples of toxic content include hate speech, violence, extremism, illegal acts, or child sexual abuse material, as well as content that violates community norms such as profanity, inflammatory political speech, or pornography.
AI system
Due to a decision or action made by an AI system
Intentional
Due to an expected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed