(Originally published by The New York Times on January 12, 2026.)

On Christmas Eve, Elon Musk announced that Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot offered by his company xAI, would now include an image and a video editing feature. Unfortunately, numerous X users have since asked Grok to edit photos of real women and even children by stripping them down to bikinis (or worse) — and Grok often complies.

The resulting torrent of sexualized imagery is now under investigation by regulators worldwide for potential violations of laws against child sexual abuse material and nonconsensual sexual imagery. Indonesia and Malaysia have chosen to temporarily block access to Grok.

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