Sickening Photo Trend on X Sees Women’s Clothing Being Removed by Grok

At the beginning of this week, PetaPixel reported that Elon Musk’s X had rolled out a controversial new feature allowing users to edit any photo on the platform without asking permission. Within days, the new tool has been abused — and it is women who are being targeted.

British journalist Samantha Smith shared a screenshot in which an anonymous user had requested that Grok, X’s AI bot, remove her clothing and put her in a bikini. “How is this not illegal?” Smith writes.

Smith followed up this post by saying: “I’ve seen countless comments asking Grok to edit images of children in disgusting ways.” She calls the trend “sick.”

As of Friday, many more women are speaking up about this issue. Australian rapper Iggy Azalea said, “Grok seriously needs to go.”

Indian politician Priyanka Chaturvedi has written a letter to her government about this issue.

“Have sought urgent attention and intervention of Hon. IT Minister to take the issue of increasing incidents of AI apps being prompted to sexualise and undress women by unauthorised use of their images on social media. There have to be guardrails put in place by features such as Grok that do not violate women’s dignity, big tech firms need to take the onus,” she writes on X.

The bikini trend began with famous figures; Musk himself asked Grok to put him in a bikini.

But it quickly snowballed to non-famous people. Digit reports that there have been instances where users have been uploading photos that weren’t on the platform just so they can ask it for a bikini picture.

Some people have attempted to defend the trend by saying that there are plenty of other “nudify” apps on the internet. But as I wrote on Monday, “while any picture posted on the internet can potentially be manipulated or edited with AI tools, the convenience of X’s latest tool is clearly a concern.”

At the time, I was writing about concern for photographers and artists whose work could be changed without authorization. But it has become something far more sinister. X will hopefully rein Grok in.

Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.