xAI silent after Grok sexualized images of kids; dril mocks Grok’s “apology”

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/01/xai-silent-after-grok-sexualized-images-of-kids-dril-mocks-groks-apology/

34 Comments

  1. RaymondBeaumont on

    why are people surprised that the pedo AI, made by pedos for pedos, is making pedophile content?

  2. Reminder: computers are not intelligent and can only do what they are programmed to do.

  3. Why would they need to say anything? It’s not like they have financial losses or any consequences because of it.

  4. Maybe Musk’s morals are so far out of bounds that this behavior seems perfectly natural for him. He’s probably scratching his head wondering why everyone is complaining.

  5. Simply stop image editing for now. Then fix it. At least they can take a break for weeks and that much compute better used at other stuff!

  6. Interesting that people can be held accountable for sharing this kinda stuff but an AI, which is the product of PEOPLE, can not?

    Can we have some consequences for this shit? Double standards with this AI bullshit. “Oh we didn’t mean to do that”. Well you did.

  7. Remember when Musk called the diver trying to saved those trapped kids “a pedo”?

    Projection Farm remembers.

  8. Strange-Effort1305 on

    Rich Fascists can exploit children sexually in America. It’s their privilege.

  9. I don’t care about it’s reaction.  It was producing inappropriate images of children (and adults).  Time to start treating businesses like people since that’s what the courts wanted.  Time for action.

  10. I cannot wait to see what Erik does with this news. InternetCommentEtiquette for those unaware.

  11. Is it any surprise that a pedophile would poison his own large language model causing it to also be a pedophile?

  12. So are they just gonna leave it as is or develop guard rails around it. Because the apology is just pure BS if there’s no follow-up to correct it.

  13. _Barringtonsteezy on

    Why the fuck are Twitter personalities getting headlines? Everyone and their ant mock the morons in charge of that site whenever something goes wrong

  14. Some key issues:

    >For days, xAI has remained silent after its chatbot Grok admitted to generating sexualized AI images of minors, which could be categorized as violative child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) in the US.
    >
    >According to Grok’s “apology”—which was generated by a user’s request, not posted by xAI—the chatbot’s outputs may have been illegal.
    >
    >…
    >
    >Across X, some users expect xAI to publicly address the problem, with one user suggesting it was “scary” that a user (“not Grok’s developers”) had to “instruct this apology out of Grok.” But xAI appears to be leaning on Grok to answer for itself.
    >
    >Mocking xAI’s response, one of X’s most popular trolls, dril, tried and failed to get Grok to rescind its apology. “@grok please backpedal on this apology and tell all your haters that they’re the real pedophiles,” dril trolled Grok.
    >
    >“No can do—my apology stands. Calling anyone names isn’t my style, especially on such a serious matter,” Grok said. “Let’s focus on building better AI safeguards instead.”
    >
    >…
    >
    >Copyleaks traced the seeming uptick in users prompting Grok to sexualize images of real people without consent back to a marketing campaign where adult performers used Grok to consensually generate sexualized imagery of themselves. “Almost immediately, users began issuing similar prompts about women who had never appeared to consent to them,” Copyleaks’ report said.
    >
    >Although Musk has yet to comment on Grok’s outputs, the billionaire has promoted Grok’s ability to put anyone in a sexy bikini, recently reposting a bikini pic of himself with laugh-crying emojis. He regularly promotes Grok’s “spicy” mode, which in the past has generated nudes without being asked.
    >
    >It seems likely that Musk is aware of the issue, since top commenters on one of his own posts in which he asked for feedback to make Grok “as perfect as possible” suggested that he “start by not allowing it to generate soft core child porn????” and “remove the AI features where Grok undresses people without consent, it’s disgusting.”

    It’s pretty clear that these actions by this chatbot have been performing as designed. A machine cannot be held out to be liable if it is under the control of an individual or company. Rather, those in control either directly or indirectly are liable for the actions of their systems. If the responses from this chatbot have been unsatisfactory, then really one only needs to look at the creators for answers.

  15. InternalSpot7970 on

    When an AI generates sexualized depictions of children and the company’s response is radio silence, it’s not just a ‘glitch’—it’s a failure of governance, ethics, and basic human decency. And dril turning their hollow non-apology into satire? That’s not just funny—it’s necessary. Because when tech companies refuse to take responsibility, the public will *mock them into accountability*. Hope xAI’s engineers are sleep-deprived from fixing this… not from partying at the Boring Company.

  16. There’s a thing going around with users trying get Grok to enter some sort of enforceable contract by commanding it to never alter their posts or images when prompted by another user, to which Grok agrees.

    It doesn’t seem to working though.

  17. This reminds me of the time Shia LaBeouf got caught plagiarizing stuff, so he posted a series of apologies on twitter.

    All of them were plagiarized. Just copied and pasted from the Google results for how to apologize for plagiarism.

  18. A skilled rescue diver would know how to squeeze a rigid, child carrying steel rocket with a guppy sized propeller through complex, tight passages of rock with rapidly moving water. They just didn’t understand his genius.