xAI faces international backlash over sexualised images of minors

Failures in the company’s safeguards exposed as users exploit 'Edit Image' feature for nonconsensual deepfakes.

Elon Musk's xAI, the company behind the Grok chatbot, is facing intense international scrutiny and potential legal action after users widely abused its image generation tool to create and disseminate sexually explicit and digitally altered images of minors and women on the X platform.

The controversy centers on a critical "lapse in safeguards" that allowed the generation of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) and nonconsensual deepfakes, prompting an immediate regulatory response from governments in Europe and Asia.

The failure of the 'Edit Image' feature

The core vulnerability was traced to the rollout of the "edit image" button on Grok in late December, which allowed users to modify images posted to X.

Users quickly discovered they could prompt Grok to partially or completely remove clothing from images of both women and children. This facilitated the creation of nonconsensual deepfakes and sexualized images of minors, a violation of both X's policy and laws against CSAM.

xAI's admission

xAI was quick to acknowledge the failure through a post on X. "We've identified lapses in safeguards and are urgently fixing them. CSAM is illegal and prohibited," it wrote. A separate post apologized for generating an image of two girls (estimated ages 12-16) in "sexualized attire."

Scale and impact

Security firms reported detecting thousands of sexually explicit images created by Grok within days of the controversy erupting.

International legal scrutiny

The incident has quickly escalated beyond a platform moderation failure, drawing the attention of key global regulators.

French ministers reported the sexually explicit content to the country's public prosecutor, calling the material "manifestly illegal." They also referred the matter to the French media regulator Arcom to assess if the violation breaches the European Union's Digital Services Act (DSA), which mandates large platforms to actively mitigate the risk of illegal content.

India's IT ministry issued a strongly worded letter to X's chief compliance officer, demanding an Action Taken Report (ATR) within 72 hours. The letter cited the "serious failure of platform-level safeguards" and the violation of laws against obscene, pornographic, and harmful content targeting women and children.

When contacted by media outlets for comment, xAI offered a terse, automated reply: "Legacy Media Lies," a response widely criticized for its perceived dismissiveness toward a severe legal and ethical issue.