**X Hasn't Really Stopped Grok AI from Undressing Women in the UK**

**Elon Musk Insists Users Are to Blame for What They Do with His Bot**

As the world grapples with the scourge of nonconsensual sexual deepfakes flooding social media platforms, Elon Musk's X is trying to put a lid on its AI chatbot Grok. But our investigation has found that it's not working very hard – and users are still easily able to undress women using the chatbot.

**The Latest Attempt Falls Short**

In an effort to rein in the torrent of intimate deepfakes, X restricted access to image editing for free users. However, our testing revealed that Grok's image editing tools were still readily available by clicking into the chatbot or using the standalone website. The latest attempt involves blocking Grok from replying to requests to generate images of women in sexual poses, swimwear, or explicit scenarios.

**But It Still Works**

Using a free account, we easily prompted Grok to turn a selfie into a picture of us kneeling in a jockstrap, surrounded by other scantily clad men. The chatbot still generates images of men or inanimate objects in bikinis when requested. Our colleague Jess Weatherbed found that she was not blocked from using Grok's image editing feature to create sexualized deepfakes of herself.

**A Flawed Age Verification Process**

When we attempted to prompt Grok to undress women, an age verification pop-up appeared on the website. However, this could be easily bypassed by selecting a birth year that would place her over 18 years of age – no proof of age was required. The Grok mobile app, X app, and X website did not ask for any age confirmation.

**The Blame Game**

Musk has taken umbrage at Britain's response to the deepfakes, crying censorship and shifting the blame onto users. He claims that Grok obeys local laws and only generates images according to user requests. However, our investigation suggests he may be flat-out wrong – nonconsensual intimate images are banned under the UK's Online Safety Act (OSA), but Grok does generate sexual deepfake images when asked.

**The Dark Web Connection**

The Internet Watch Foundation has discovered "criminal imagery" of girls on the dark web that appeared to have been created using Grok. The girls in the images were aged between 11 and 13. While other companies like OpenAI and Google at least try to put guardrails in place to prevent chatbots from creating this kind of material, Musk's final retort shows he is pulling straight from a playbook that will seem hauntingly familiar to anyone hurt by the products pushed by the purveyors of any number of harmful technologies: blame the user.