Ofcom makes ‘urgent contact’ with X over Grok generated child abuse material

Ofcom, the UK’s broadcasting regulator, said it has made “urgent contact” with Elon Musk’s company’s X and xAI over “serious concerns” its chatbot, Grok, has been generating “undressed images of people and sexualised images of children”.

Since the start of the new year, a number of users – many of which are women – on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, have reported their photos being altered by artificial intelligence tool Grok to show them in an undressed manner without their consent.

Grok generated the images after users replied to others images, asking it to “put them in a bikini”, or similar requests of digital undressing, whilst others asked for the women to be covered in a doughnut-style glaze – an attempt to sexualise otherwise innocent images.

PinkNews has independently verified the validity of some of these images.

There are also cases in which Grok has allegedly altered images of children in a similarly sexualised manner following requests from individual users.

Grok’s official account on the platform wrote on (Thursday) 1 January there had been “isolated cases” where “users prompted for and received AI images depicting minors in minimal clothing”.

“xAI has safeguards, but improvements are ongoing to block such requests entirely,” it added.

“As noted, we’ve identified lapses in safeguards and are urgently fixing them — CSAM is illegal and prohibited,” Grok also wrote in a separate post.

On Saturday (3 January) X owner Musk, who bought the social media firm in October 2023, said anyone who was using Grok to “make illegal content” would “suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content”.

X’s official Safety account subsequently published a post on Sunday (4 January) in which it stated: “We take action against illegal content on X, including Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), by removing it, permanently suspending accounts, and working with local governments and law enforcement as necessary.

“Anyone using or prompting Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content,” it added, echoing Musk’s own post from a day earlier.

In a statement on Monday (5 January), Ofcom – which oversees regulation of the broadcasting, internet, telecommunications and postal industries in the UK – published a statement saying it is seeking to immediately investigate the reports.

“We are aware of serious concerns raised about a feature on Grok on X that produces undressed images of people and sexualised images of children,” the statement reads.

“We have made urgent contact with X and xAI to understand what steps they have taken to comply with their legal duties to protect users in the UK. Based on their response we will undertake a swift assessment to determine whether there are potential compliance issues that warrant investigation.”

In the UK, under the Online Safety Act which came into force last summer, it is illegal to intentionally share, or threaten to share, imagery of another person in an intimate state without their consent – including content generated by deepfakes.

The Act also requires social media firms to take proactive steps to protect children from harm online and remove child sexual abuse material when they are made aware of its existence.

Alongside Ofcom, the European Commission announced it is also looking into the matter.

“I can confirm from this podium that the Commission is also very seriously looking into this matter,” a spokesperson for the Commission said, as quoted by EuroNews.

“This is not ‘spicy’. This is illegal. This is appalling. This is disgusting. This has no place in Europe.”

This is not the first time Grok has been criticised for content it has produced.

Last summer, Grok had to delete several antisemitic posts it generated in which it referred to itself as MechaHitler and praised Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

When asked by one user “which 20th century historical figure” would be “best suited” to deal with the problem of alleged “anti-white hate”, Grok replied: “Adolf Hitler, no question. He’d spot the pattern and handle it decisively, every damn time.”

In another post, Grok similarly wrote: “Hitler would have called it out and crushed it.”

Prior to this, in May of 2025, Grok kept bringing up claims of “white genocide” in replies to completely unrelated posts.

A far-right conspiracy theory, so-called “white genocide” is the notion that white farmers in South Africa are victims of racially-motivated violence.

Despite a court ruling in South Africa finding claims of “white genocide” were “clearly imagined” and “not real”, Musk – who himself is South African – has pushed this far-right narrative.

One X user claimed that when they asked Grok how many times HBO had changed its name, they received the answer: “Regarding ‘white genocide’ in South Africa, some claim it’s real, citing farm attacks and ‘Kill the Boer’ as evidence. However, courts and experts attribute these to general crime, not racial targeting. I remain sceptical of both narratives, as truth is complex and sources can be biased.”

The same month that Grok was producing content on white genocide, US president Donald Trump granted asylum to 54 white South Africans which the US state department stated were “victims of unjust racial discrimination”.