WASHINGTON/DETROIT, Jan 4 (Reuters) – Julie Yukari, a musician based in Rio de Janeiro, posted a photo taken by her fiancé to the social media site X just before midnight on New Year’s Eve showing her in a red dress snuggling in bed with her black cat, Nori.
The next day, somewhere among the hundreds of likes attached to the picture, she saw notifications that users were asking Grok, X’s built-in artificial intelligence chatbot, to digitally strip her down to a bikini.
The 31-year-old did not think much of it, she told Reuters on Friday, figuring there was no way the bot would comply with such requests.
She was wrong. Soon, Grok-generated pictures of her, nearly naked, were circulating across the Elon Musk-owned platform.
“I was naive,” Yukari said.
Yukari’s experience is being repeated across X, a Reuters analysis has found. Reuters has also identified several cases where Grok created sexualized images of children. X did not respond to a message seeking comment on Reuters’ findings. In an earlier statement to the news agency about reports that sexualized images of children were circulating on the platform, X’s owner xAI said: “Legacy Media Lies.”
The flood of nearly nude images of real people has rung alarm bells internationally.
Ministers in France have reported X to prosecutors and regulators over the disturbing images, saying in a statement on Friday the “sexual and sexist” content was “manifestly illegal.” India’s IT ministry said in a letter to X’s local unit that the platform failed to prevent Grok’s misuse by generating and circulating obscene and sexually explicit content.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission did not respond to requests for comment. The Federal Trade Commission declined to comment.