Musk’s Grok Is Abusing Women and Children. Our Government Needs to Act

It was New Year’s Eve, so Claire did what millions of others do on any given day. She snapped a selfie.

In the image, she’s wearing the standard uniform for the final night of the year: a sparkling little black dress with slingback kitten heels.

It was fun and festive, the kind of thing you’d see on any social platform — so she posted it on Elon Musk’s X.

But X, formerly known as Twitter, is no longer like any other social platform, despite what the politicians and decision-makers who continue to use it seem to believe.

“It was immediately after I had posted that picture that I started seeing comments underneath it,” Claire recounted to The Tyee.

Anonymous users flooded her replies, feeling the draw of the troll’s siren song: a woman who dared to have self-confidence. In this case, though, they came armed with a punishing plan. They demanded Grok, Elon Musk’s proprietary AI chatbot, take off Claire’s clothes.

The Tyee has agreed to identify Claire by only her first name to avoid further harassment.

“It started off, originally, as just ‘Put her in a bikini,’ and that was incredibly violating,” said Claire.

“It became more and more graphic. It was ‘Put her in clear fishing tie,’ so that it was a clear image of me basically naked.”

“Seeing the bikini one was incredibly violating, but then all of a sudden, seeing that they could ultimately create a full nude of me felt so embarrassing and so shameful.”

Claire is far from alone.

In recent weeks, X users have launched a frenzied assault in the comment sections of posts featuring images of women and children, all furiously typing the same demand: that Grok peel off their clothes.

The phenomenon has grown so quickly that X’s Grok is now posting 84 times more sexual deepfakes per hour than the top five deepfake websites combined, according to social media and deepfake researcher Genevieve Oh.

Some of those images have been of children.

Elon Musk has barely lifted a finger to stop this. After public pressure, he limited the abuse of others’ photos to paying subscribers — effectively monetizing the ability to produce non-consensual deepfakes with just a few keystrokes. And any user can also still produce such images using the app version of Grok.

In recent days, Musk has complained that a U.K. government regulator’s move to investigate X over the deepfake problem is an attack on free speech.

Musk’s paywall has done nothing to help users like Claire.

“Grok is still publicly displaying the image on their site. It's still a public image. People can still access it and grab it,” she said.

At the time of publication, the editor and author of this story were able to verify the image was still online.

“That's upsetting to me, that I had multiple friends and multiple followers go out and report this image, and yet it's still public. It's frustrating to me that there aren't safeguards in place to make sure this stuff doesn't happen in the first place.”

Where are the lawmakers? Oh, they’re on X

As Grok continued to churn out sexual harassment, lawmakers took notice.

Evan Solomon, Canada’s minister responsible for AI regulation and safety, wrote on Jan. 8 that “deepfake sexual abuse is violence.”

“We must protect Canadians, especially women and young people, from exploitation. Platforms and AI developers have a duty to prevent this harm,” he said.

“Our government is continuing to advance responsible AI, including introducing Bill C-16, the Protecting Victims Act, to amend the Criminal Code to include deepfakes as intimate images for the offence of publication of an intimate image without consent.”

Late on Saturday night, Solomon had an addendum to his condemnation of the sexual violence of the app: “Contrary to media reports, Canada is not considering a ban of X.”

Even worse: Solomon made this post on X, a platform where he remains active alongside the majority of Canada’s politicians.

That is a failure, and one that drags all of us down with it.

Government should lead the exodus from X

Solomon also posted the statement about the deepfake crisis on Threads, where he (or, more likely, his team) maintains a barebones account entirely dedicated to posting carefully workshopped political statements and videos.

On X, however, Solomon (or his team) posts more often, sometimes with a personal touch, suggesting he may be at least somewhat personally active on that platform. He has never posted on Bluesky, where his account’s bio still reads, “Running to be your Liberal Member of Parliament for Toronto Centre.”

Solomon is just one example. He’s not alone. Take Marc Miller, the minister responsible for the decision of what social platforms government officials use.

He’s not on Threads at all, and he hasn’t posted on Bluesky in nine months. Yet he’s one of the most active ministers on X, regularly cracking jokes and roasting his critics.

As long as politicians and decision-makers continue to favour X as their text-based social media platform of choice, that’s where conversations will happen.

It’s where the thoughts of advocacy organizations are most likely to catch the eye of a scrolling cabinet minister, a potential benefit those groups sacrifice if they leave X. It’s where headline-nabbing conversations and pronouncements are likely to appear first, meaning journalists (like me) might miss potential headlines if they leave the app permanently. And if X is where the media continues to scroll, in turn, then anyone hoping to make the news (including politicians and decision-makers) will also stick around on the platform.

Full disclosure: this vicious cycle is why I’m still on X, despite really wanting to get off the platform. Do I exclude myself from Canadian decision-makers’ preferred town square, potentially missing scoops and stories as a result? Or do I stay, where I in turn perpetuate this cycle and leave myself vulnerable to vicious abuse?

Claire had similar feelings.

“It's incredibly conflicting, because I do believe in the idea of a digital town (or) public square, right? This idea where you can have a place where we can go and trade ideas and share content and share news and updates, and Twitter has been that for so long,” she said.

From the Me Too movement to Black Lives Matter to the Arab Spring, Twitter has previously been “critical” for social movements, Claire said.

“I still believe it has that capacity. It's just a shame that the leadership there is so toxic... it has created this environment where women aren't safe on that app, and where a lot of ideas aren't safe on that app.”

This is why our government is the one that must lead the charge — and I’d suggest they head for Bluesky rather than Threads, given Meta’s history of moderation issues and its policy of blocking our news.

Politicians often try to run from the media, but the media follow politicians like a dog with a bone, monitoring them closely for headlines and accountability stories. For that reason, if the entire government leaves X (and I mean truly leaves, using Bluesky as they once used X), the media will follow, as will advocacy groups that want to be heard by the government, and pundits who want to be seen by the media.

This would also have the added benefit of all these decision-makers no longer having their outlook skewed by time spent scrolling on an algorithm curated to lean hard right thanks to its supreme leader, Elon Musk. Musk himself regularly amplifies white supremacist talking points to his 231 million followers on X.

It’s an urgent call. So I asked both Miller’s and Solomon’s offices if the government would consider an exodus from the app that has become the biggest propagator of non-consensual deepfakes on the web.

“We are continuing to monitor the situation. We put out a statement yesterday and we [are] discussing this issue across government departments as the situation is developing,” responded Sofia Ouslis, Solomon’s press secretary.

Miller’s office, which is in charge of the government’s decision to use any given social platform, did not directly address my question about staying on X.

“Our government wants Canadians to be safe as they navigate the digital world, and platforms have an important role to play in meeting that responsibility. While artificial intelligence offers immense opportunities, it also presents real challenges,” replied Hermine Landry, Miller’s press secretary.

“That’s why our government is focused on establishing a strong, system-wide framework for AI safety and governance, and is committed to acting swiftly to better protect Canadians, especially children, from online harm.”

Holding Musk accountable

Should the government opt to take action, it wouldn’t be alone. Governments around the world are inching in the direction of finally holding Musk’s X accountable for its disturbing actions.

According to an article published in podcaster Paris Marx’s Disconnect blog, the European Union, the United Kingdom, France and Australia all launched investigations into the matter. Indian officials gave X 72 hours to address the issue, and Brazilian politicians called for the platform to be banned.

In the United Kingdom, ministers have signalled an openness to banning the platform, prompting a U.S. Republican congresswoman to threaten sanctions. On Saturday, Indonesia became the first country in the world to block the Grok chatbot entirely.

Until Canadian lawmakers decide to either ban X or leave it en masse, users like Claire will continue to pay the price for public participation in Canada’s main digital town square — one where they face sexual violence and are further punished if they dare to speak out about it.

After Claire defended herself, publicly voicing her disgust at the violations of her images, “people were threatening to send it to my LinkedIn contacts,” she said.

“People were claiming that they had found my cousins on my Instagram, and they were sending it to my cousins on Instagram, and they were going to spread it to my family, and they were going to spread it to my friends.

“When women speak up, it becomes even worse, and we're shamed into making sure that if we're violated in any way, that we're to keep quiet — or otherwise, things will get worse.”

This article is part of The Tyee’s reader-funded Reality Check project exposing and explaining the rise of digital disinformation.