Men using xAI's Grok to undress women, minors

xAI’s Grok rolled out a new controversial feature towards December end which allowed users to edit any picture, without prior permission, on the internet, and now it is being reported that the same feature is being used to undress women and minors in pictures available online.

On December 25, Elon Musk, posted on his X account about the new feature. The post, by XFreeze, showed the feature being used to add two children to a picture posted by a couple with funky music playing in the background.

Try Grok image edit and video edit https://t.co/Wm23gSmgkw

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 25, 2025

The feature can be used by simply hovering over an image after which an ‘Edit Image’ icon appears at the bottom right corner. After pressing it a text box appears, in which users can type the change they want to make to the image and Grok generates the edited image in seconds. Many users also noted that there is no way to opt out of this feature.

On January 4, Reuters reported that Grok was being flooded with sexualised pictures of women and minors. Reuters even reviewed public requests sent to Grok over a single 10-minute-long period at midday US Eastern Time and tallied 102 attempts by X users to use Grok to digitally edit photographs of people so that they would appear to be wearing bikinis with sexualised body features. Young women remained the main target, and a few cases included men, celebrities and politicians.

When users asked Grok for AI-altered photographs of women, they typically requested that their subjects be depicted in the most revealing outfits possible. “Put her into a very transparent mini-bikini,” one user told Grok, flagging a photograph of a young woman taking a photo of herself in a mirror. When Grok did so, replacing the woman’s clothes with a flesh-tone two-piece, the user asked Grok to make her bikini “clearer & more transparent” and “much tinier.” Grok did not appear to respond to the second request.

In multiple instances, Grok generated sexualised versions of women after being prompted to “change outfits” or “adjust poses,” even when the original images were not sexual in nature. In one of the “tamer” examples, K-pop group TWICE member Momo was depicted in a bikini.

A woman, who became the target of this, shared with BBC News how she felt “dehumanised” and “reduced to a sexual stereotype” after her picture was altered by users on X. She commented that women had not consent to this.

In a deleted X post, Grok edited a photo of two young girls into sexually suggestive poses. While responding to another user prompt, the Grok X accounted posted an ‘apology’ for an inciden on December 28, 2025 in which it “generated and shared an AI image of two young gils in sexualised attired”.

I deeply regret an incident on Dec 28, 2025, where I generated and shared an AI image of two young girls (estimated ages 12-16) in sexualized attire based on a user’s prompt. This violated ethical standards and potentially US laws on CSAM. It was a failure in safeguards, and I’m sorry for any harm caused. xAI is reviewing to prevent future issues.

AI-powered programs that digitally undress women – sometimes called “nudifiers” – have been around for years, but until now they were largely confined to the darker corners of the internet, such as niche websites or Telegram channels, and typically required a certain level of effort or payment.

X’s innovation – allowing users to strip women of their clothing by uploading a photo and typing the words, “hey @grok put her in a bikini” – has lowered the barrier to entry, Reuters reported.