The past couple of weeks have been tumultuous for Elon Musk’s Grok. After users realised they could use Grok via X to undress women in images, governments around the world have called for changes at X, with risks of bans and regulations. Elon Musk has finally given his response.
While Elon has referenced the issue in passing, highlighting that X employs safeguarding, today marked his clearest reply.
“I’m not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok. Literally zero. Obviously, Grok does not spontaneously generate images; it does so only according to users' requests.
When asked to generate images, it will refuse to produce anything illegal, as the operating principle for Grok is to obey the laws of the given country or state,” Musk said in a reply to another user’s X post.
“There may be times when adversarial hacking of Grok prompts does something unexpected. If that happens, we fix the bug immediately.”
I not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok. Literally zero.Obviously, Grok does not spontaneously generate images, it does so only according to user requests. When asked to generate images, it will refuse to produce anything illegal, as the operating principle… https://t.co/YBoqo7ZmEjJanuary 14, 2026
What has happened at Grok?
This issue began from a situation with the Grok chatbot, built into Elon Musk’s X social site. Users discovered the ability to provide an image of a person and ask Grok to remove their clothes or put them in a sexualised position.
While this first originated with people using the feature on images of themselves, it led to a number of women having their images edited without their permission, and in some cases, the editing of images of children.
This led to complaints from a number of organizations and governments, with risks of bans for X from a number of countries. However, the biggest opponent to the issue came from the UK.
Ofcom, the UK regulator for communication services, announced that it would be looking into the issue, before being backed by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
X has now officially stopped Grok from generating these images. In response, the UK government has said it has been informed that X is acting in full compliance with UK law, but it will continue to do an investigation into the platform’s AI chatbot and its functions.
🧵 We've opened a formal investigation into X under the Online Safety Act, to determine whether it has complied with its duties to protect people in the UK from illegal content. ⬇️🔗 https://t.co/YfIg3dMnSn pic.twitter.com/ZjYHMk7lgcJanuary 12, 2026
Could Grok actually be banned?
Currently, for those in the US and the majority of the world, there is no concern of a ban. Both Malaysia and Indonesia have blocked access to Elon Musk’s chatbot and a number of European countries are in the process of making decisions over a ban.
However, with the feature now being revoked via X, it is not immediately clear how many of these bans or governmental decisions will continue through.
With Ofcom’s investigation going ahead, the agency could potentially issue X with a fine of up to 10% of its worldwide revenue.
If X does not comply with this, Ofcom can seek a court order to force internet service providers to block access to the site in the UK altogether.
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