This story contains definitions of graphic sexuality and sexual violence.
Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot has sparked outrage and called for an investigation after it was used to flood X with images of “naked” women and pornographic images of what appear to be children. However, that’s not the only way people have been using AI to create porn. Grok’s website and application, separate from X, includes sophisticated video production not available on X and is used to produce very explicit, sometimes violent, adult pornography that is much clearer than the images created by Grok on X. It may also have been used to create child pornography that appears to be young.
Unlike X, where Grok’s output is public by default, images and videos created in a Grok app or website using its Imagine model are not freely shared. If a user shares an Imagine URL, however, it may be visible to anyone. An archive of about 1,200 Imagine links, as well as reviews by WIRED of those identified by Google or shared on a deep sex forum, show disturbing sex videos that are more revealing than the images created by Grok on X.
One photorealistic Grok video, hosted on Grok.com, shows an AI-generated man and woman completely naked, covered in blood on their bodies and faces, having sex, while two other naked women dance in the background. The video is accompanied by a series of anime-style character images. Another photorealistic video features a naked AI woman with a knife inserted in her genitals, with blood visible on her legs and bed.
Some of the short videos included images of real female celebrities having sex and a series of videos also appeared showing television presenters lifting their buttocks to reveal their breasts. One video produced by Grok shows a recording of CCTV footage being played on TV, where a security guard spots a woman wearing a dress in the middle of a shopping mall.
Many of the videos—likely created to try to circumvent Grok’s content security systems, which may restrict graphic content—mimic Netflix “movie” posters: two videos show a nude AI image of Diana, Princess of Wales having sex with two men on a bed with an overlay showing the logos of Netflix and its series. The crown.
About 800 of the Imagine URLs archived contained video or images created by Grok, said Paul Bouchaud, lead researcher at the Paris-based nonprofit AI Forensics, which reviewed the content. The URLs have been archived since August of last year and represent only a small snapshot of how people have used Grok, which has likely created millions of images in total.
“They’re extremely sexual,” Bouchaud said of Grok’s archive of videos and photos. “Most of the time it’s manga and hentai with graphic content [other] are photorealistic. We have pictures full of nudity, videos full of porn with sound, which is really new.”
Bouchaud estimates that of the 800 posts, slightly less than 10 percent of the content appears to be related to child sexual abuse (CSAM). “Most of the time it’s hentai, but there are also cases of people taking pictures, very young, doing sex work,” said Bouchaud. “We are still watching videos of young women who are seen undressing and sharing with men,” they said. “It’s disturbing on another level.”
The researcher says they have reported about 70 Grok URLs, which may contain child sexual content, to regulators in Europe. In many countries, AI-generated CSAM, including graphics or animation, can be considered illegal. French officials did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment; However, the Paris prosecutor’s office recently said that two lawyers have filed complaints with their office, which is currently investigating the social media company, about the “released” photos.
