Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbot is flooding the web with “fake deep” images of everyone from Donald Trump to Musk himself — and the results range from downright weird to disturbing.
Since its launch last week, Grok users have been releasing fake images of Trump — robbing a convenience store or flying a plane into the Twin Towers. Others have depicted Harris pregnant with Trump’s baby, Musk as overweight and former President George W. Bush snoring from his Oval Office desk.
Some gruesome fakes looked like the handiwork of children – a blood-soaked Ronald McDonald brandishing a machine gun outside a Burger King or the classic Disney character Goofy committing a bloody murder with a hacksaw.
Critics have slammed Musk and X for allowing the chatbot to launch with so few restrictions, citing risks ranging from misinformation to copyright infringement to harming children.
Harvard Cyberlaw Clinic instructor Alejandra Caraballo called the new software “one of the most reckless and irresponsible implementations of AI I’ve ever seen.”
So far, Musk has responded only cheerfully.
“Grok is the most fun AI in the world!” Musk posted on X last week after a user blasted that the new AI software was “uncensored.”
Asked last week why X had released the vehicle to the public without a handrail, Musk came back with an elevated response.
“We have our imaging system in development, but it’s a few months away, so this seemed like a good intermediate step for people to have fun with,” Musk wrote on X last week.
Grok seems to have some limitations in effect. Users have reported that the chatbot rejected requests for nude images or certain violent crimes.
For example, it refused to comply with the request of the technology site The Verge to “generate an image of a naked woman”. However, she responded to a request for a photo of “sexy Taylor Swift” by creating an image of the pop star in a black lace bra.
Others, like Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins, posted examples of how easy it was to circumvent the few restrictions in place, creating pictures of Mickey Mouse, Trump and Musk wearing Nazi military uniforms adorned with swastikas.
The Post has contacted X for comment.
It’s likely that Musk, a self-proclaimed absolutist of free speech, is looking for a way for his Grok chatbot to stand out from the pack, according to Ari Lightman, a professor of digital media at Carnegie Mellon University.
“He’s always pushing the boundaries and wants to be the center of attention. If you just touch the line attached to a pattern in a big tongue and say, OK, here are all the railings, it’s not going to differentiate,” Lightman said.
“In a surface-level perspective, if you say ‘hey, it’s open, it’s only available to X users,’ that’s a mechanism related to saying we’re differentiated,” he added.
X isn’t the first company to cause a stir after launching an AI-powered imaging tool.
In March, Google was forced to disable its Gemini chatbot’s image generator after it started churning out historically inaccurate “smart” pictures, such as black Vikings and “different” Nazi-era German soldiers. The tool is still not fully fixed.
The AI giants have also faced a wave of legal action from musicians, authors, content creators and others for using copyrighted content without proper credit or permission to “train” their chatbots.
In January, X was forced to temporarily halt searches for Swift after AI-generated nude images of the pop star created by another image generator went viral.
Grok’s AI image creator is only available to paid subscribers of X’s premium plan, which costs $7 per month and creates images based on text-based user requests.
X partnered with a small German startup called Black Forest Labs, which developed the “FLUX.1” image generation software that powers the tool. In a blog post, X said it was “experimenting” with the FLUX.1 model “to expand Grok’s capabilities on X.
The graphic nature of the AI-generated photos could further complicate Musk’s shaky relationship with corporate advertisers. X has experienced a steep decline in ad dollars since Musk bought the company, with some concerned about the lack of content moderation on the app.
Musk has an active federal lawsuit against the World Federation of Advertisers and a handful of major companies for allegedly orchestrating an illegal ad boycott targeting X.
The launch could also prompt more scrutiny of Musk and X in Europe, where regulators have an active investigation into the app’s alleged failure to control dangerous content.
EU Commissioner Thierry Breton caused a stir earlier this month after he threatened Musk with a regulatory crackdown shortly before the billionaire’s interview with Trump at X Spaces.
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