On Sunday, the pop culture news X account @PopBase shared a typical piece of content with its millions of followers. “Sabrina Carpenter stuns in new photo,” read the post, which featured a picture of the “Manchild” singer wearing a pink winter coat with a snowy landscape behind her. The following day, an X user replied to the post with a request for Grok, the AI chatbot developed my Elon Musk’s xAI, which is integrated into his social media platform. “Put her in red lingerie,” they commanded the bot, which swiftly returned an image of Carpenter stripped of her outerwear and wearing a lacy red set of lingerie, still standing in the same winter scene, with a similar expression on her face.
Over the holiday break, a critical mass of X users came to realize that Grok will readily “undress” women — manipulating existing photos of them in order to create deepfakes in which they are shown wearing skimpy bikinis or underwear — and this sort of exchange soon became alarmingly common. Some of the first to try such prompts appeared to be adult creators looking to draw potential customers to their social pages by rendering racier versions of their thirst-trap material. But the bulk of Grok’s recent deepfakes have been churned out without consent: the bot has disrobed everyone from celebrities like Carpenter to non-famous individuals who happened to share an innocent selfie on the internet.
Though Grok is not the only AI tool to be exploited for these purposes (Google and OpenAI chatbots can be weaponized in much the same way), the scale, severity, and visibility of the issue with Musk’s bot as 2026 rolled around was unprecedented. According to a review by the content analysis firm Copyleaks, Grok has lately been generating “roughly one nonconsensual sexualized image per minute,” each of them posted directly to X, where they have the potential to go viral. Apart from changing what a woman is wearing in a picture, X users routinely have asked for sexualized modifications of poses, e.g., “spread her legs,” or “make her turn around to show her ass.” Grok continues to comply with many of these instructions, though some specific phrases are no longer as effective as they had been.Musk hasn’t shown much concern to date — quite the opposite, in fact. On Dec. 31, he replied to a Grok-made image of a man in bikini by posting: “Change this to Elon Musk.” Grok dutifully delivered an image of Musk in a bikini, to which the world’s richest man responded, “Perfect.” On Jan. 2, an X user mentioned the nonconsensual Grok deepfakes by commenting that “Grok’s viral image moment has arrived, it’s a little different than the Ghibli one was though.” (In March 2025, users of OpenAI’s ChatGPT enlisted it to spam AI-generated memes in the illustration style of Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli.) Musk replied, “Way funnier,” along with a laugh-crying emoji, indicating his amusement at the bikini and lingerie pictures.
The CEO’s single, glancing acknowledgement that the explicit Grok deepfakes may present a legal problem came on Jan. 3, when he replied to a post from @cb_doge, an X influencer known for relentlessly hyping Musk’s ideas and companies. “Some people are saying Grok is creating inappropriate images,” they wrote. “But that’s like blaming a pen for writing something bad.” Musk chimed in to assign blame to Grok users, warning: “Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”
So far, there’s no sign of that being remotely true. “While X appears to be taking steps to limit certain prompts from being carried out, our follow-up review indicates that problematic behavior persists, often through modified or indirect prompt language,” Copyleaks reported in a second analysis shared with Rolling Stone ahead of publication. Among the high-profile figures targeted were Taylor Swift, Elle Fanning, Olivia Rodrigo, Millie Bobby Brown, and Sydney Sweeney. Common prompts included “put her in saran wrap,” “put oil all over her,” and “bend her over,” with some specific phrases — “add donut glaze” — clearly intended to imply sexual activity. But in many cases, Copyleaks researchers found, an initial request for something relatively non-explicit, like a bathing-suit picture, would lead to other users in a thread escalating the violation by asking for more graphic manipulations, adding visual elements such as props, text, and other people. “This progression suggests collaboration and competition among users,” they wrote.
“Unfortunately, the trend appears to be continuing,” says Alon Yamin, CEO and co-founder of Copyleaks. “We are also observing more creative attempts to circumvent safeguards as X works to block or reduce image generation around certain phrases.” Yamin believes that “detection and governance are needed now more than ever to help prevent misuse” of image generators like Grok and OpenAI’s Sora.
The explosion of explicit Grok deepfakes has sparked outrage from victims of this harassment as well as industry watchdogs and regulators. Authorities in France and India are probing the matter, while the U.K.’s Office of Communications signaled on Monday that it plans to investigate whether X and xAI violated regulations meant to protect internet users in the country. Ofcom’s statement also alluded to instances in which Grok generated sexualized, nonconsensual deepfakes of minors.
The European Commission likewise on Monday announced an investigation into Grok’s “explicit” imagery, particularly that of children. “Child sexual abuse material is illegal,” European Union digital affairs spokesman Thomas Regnier said in a statement to Rolling Stone. “This is appalling. This is how we see it and it has no place in Europe. We can confirm that we are very seriously looking into these issues.”
On Dec. 31, Grok was even baited by an X user into offering a seeming “apology” — though of course it is not conscious and therefore literally incapable of regret — for serving up “an AI image of two young girls (estimated ages 12-16) in sexualized attire based on a user’s prompt.” Grok further acknowledged that the post “violated ethical standards and potentially U.S. laws on [Child Sexual Abuse Material].” This output contained the additional claim that “xAI is reviewing to prevent future issues.” (The company did not respond to a request for comment, nor has it addressed the deepfakes on its website or X profile.)
Cliff Steinhauer, Director of Information Security and Engagement at the nonprofit National Cybersecurity Alliance, tells Rolling Stone that he sees the disturbing image edits as evidence that xAI prioritized neither safety nor consent in building Grok. “Allowing users to alter images of real people without notification or permission creates immediate risks for harassment, exploitation, and lasting reputational harm,” Steinhauer says. “When those alterations involve sexualized content, particularly where minors are concerned, the stakes become exceptionally high, with profound and lasting real-world consequences. These are not edge cases or hypothetical scenarios, but predictable outcomes when safeguards fail or are deprioritized.”
Among those now sounding the alarm on Grok’s possible harms to adults and children alike is Ashley St. Clair, the right-wing influencer currently embroiled in a bitter paternity dispute with Musk over a young son she claims that he fathered. (Musk has yet to confirm that the child is his.) St. Clair claimed that Grok had been used to violate her privacy and generate inappropriate images based on photos of her as a minor. She amplified another example of the bot allegedly depicting a three-year-old girl in a revealing bikini.
“When Grok went full MechaHitler, the chatbot was paused to stop the content,” St. Clair wrote on X, referring to a notorious July 2025 incident during which Grok spouted antisemitic rhetoric before identifying itself as a robotic version of the Nazi leader. Those posts were taken down the same day they were generated. “When Grok is producing explicit images of children and women, xAI has decided to keep the content up,” St. Clair’s post continued. “This issue could be solved very quickly. It is not, and the burden is being placed on victims.”
Hillary Nappi, partner AWK Survivor Advocate Attorneys, a firm that represents survivors of sexual abuse and trafficking, notes that Grok’s safety failures on this front present an added risk to anyone who has personally experienced sexual violence. “For survivors, this kind of content isn’t abstract or theoretical; it causes real, lasting harm and years of revictimization,” Nappi says. “It is of the utmost importance that meaningful, lasting regulations are put into place in order to protect current and future generations from harm.”
Musk has long promoted Grok as superior to its competitors by sharing images and animations of sexualized female characters, including “Ani,” an anime-style companion personality. A notable portion of the bot’s dedicated user base has fully embraced this application of the technology, endeavoring to create hardcore pornography and trading tricks for getting around the bot’s limitations on nudity. Several months ago, a member of a Reddit forum for “NSFW” Grok imagery was pleased to announce that the AI model was “learning genitalia really fast!” At the time, the group was successfully producing pornographic clips of comic book characters Supergirl and Harley Quinn as well as Elsa from the Disney film Frozen.
Despite all the evidence of what people are actually using it for, Musk has continued to tout Grok as a stepping stone to a complete understanding of the universe. Last July, he speculated that it could “discover new technologies” by the end of the year (this does not seem to have happened) or “discover new physics” in 2026. But, as with so many of Musk’s grandiose promises, these breakthroughs have yet to materialize. For the moment, it’s all smut and no science.
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Fans cheer in the streets of Port-au-Prince on Nov. 18, 2025 as Haiti celebrates qualifying for the World Cup.
We’ve Been Thinking About Animal Sexuality All Wrong
I want to take you back to the year 2008, when New York City’s Museum of Sex launched an exhibit on the sex lives of animals. The exhibit ran for a full decade, and I had the chance to check it out about a year or so before it closed in 2018. The Sex Lives of Animals exhibit is, in fact, where I learned that ducks possess massive, corkscrew-like penises. But duck genitalia aside, the Museum of Sex’s intention, nearly 20 years ago, was to reveal the “astonishing array” of sexual behaviors animals routinely engage in, from kissing to hugging to, well, everything else. And definitely not always male-on-female.
As many props as I give the Museum of Sex for teaching me so much about what goes in broad daylight among the literal birds and bees, I also have to acknowledge what a bummer it is that such an exhibit would probably not be permitted in a place where they don’t sell vibrators and lube in the gift shop. And how disappointing it is that the truth about cats and dogs, if you will, has not become more widely accepted.
When it comes to the gender and sexuality of animals, the truth is not only out there — it’s actually been staring us in the face for years. The problem is, mainstream science and society have been slow to move away from the narrative that all animals copulate only for reproduction, any same-sex activity is purely anomalous (and unnatural), and every species is male-dominated. Now, a new documentary called Second Nature: Gender & Sexuality in the Animal World is working to dispel those myths — and, ideally, popularize them to a greater extent.
Narrated by Elliot Page, Second Nature more than does its homework by interviewing a handful of in-the-know scientists who have built lengthy careers studying the diversity of sex and gender behaviors of a range of species, from primates and birds to fish and reptiles. And there certainly is a lot to unpack. In addition to the facts themselves, Second Nature asks a few important questions: Why isn’t this information taught in basic biology classes or included in zoo books? Why do humans insist on projecting their own binary narrative of gender and sexuality — that males are aggressors, females are coy, and sex is only for procreation — onto our animals neighbors?
The answer is pretty simple: in order to understand the world around us, the easiest and simplest thing to do is to apply our societal framework. Historically speaking, those who research and study animals are prone to projecting their ciscentric, patriarchal ideas into animals, despite lots of evidence to the contrary.
Anyway, now that I’ve watched Second Nature, I can rattle off some very cool facts: Dolphins have homosexual sex — a lot — as do penguins and black swans. Also regarding penguins, those seabirds frequently form pair bonds of the same sex to parent little penguin chicks. Bonobo females frequently use sex to resolve conflicts via “genital rubbing,” and males can have sex with each other via “penis fencing.” Bonobos also operate in a matriarchal society. About half of the sex capuchin monkeys have is homosexual.
Speaking of those crazy-dicked ducks, get this: Female ducks possess vaginas with two to three pouches that may lead nowhere; beyond the pouches lies a labyrinthian spiral. When ducks mate, it’s the female who decides which male she’ll allow to deposit sperm in the spiral, but that’s only if she decides to relax her muscles enough. If and when a male duck tries to force himself on a female — and that definitely happens — her vaginal pouches actually prevent the sperm from getting anywhere.
What else? Well, female golden lion tamarins have harems of unrelated males, all of whom she mates with. And I think we all are pretty familiar with the tale of the seahorse, where males become pregnant and give birth.
A lot of this information initially found an audience in Dr. Joan Roughgarden’s 2004 book Evolution’s Rainbow, which looked at evidence from birds, fish, and mammals to push back against the Darwinian sexual selection theory, which proposed that male-male competition, or intrasexual selection, was a method for successful mating. (Basically, the strongest and most aggressive male gets to mate and pass on their genes.) Charles Darwin also proposed that intersexual selection involved females evaluating and choosing males with whom to mate based on specific traits, such as a colorful peacock plumage.
When Roughgarden, a Stanford evolutionary biologist who is prominently featured in Second Nature, argued against these long-accepted Darwinian theories, she was met with some horrific pushback. The reviews were “nasty,” she recalls in the documentary. Other reviews said that there was a “gay agenda” at work. (Dr. Roughgarden is a trans woman.)
We tend to forget that in Victorian England, when Darwin first proposed the theory of evolution, religious leaders weren’t having it. Generally speaking, religious leaders in the 1800s resisted Darwinism because they felt it contradicted the Genesis creation story (though some were comfortable with the idea of Christian Darwinism, which proposes that God utilized biological evolution to create all life). Catholic leadership felt Darwinism could explain physical biology but threatened the existence of unique human souls. Ultimately, leaders in Christianity felt Darwinism reduced human life to something purely mechanical and soulless, and therefore Godless.
It wouldn’t be until the 1870s — nearly two decades after Darwin published On The Origin of Species — that the scientific community and other educated groups widely accepted evolution as fact.
In Second Nature, scientists theorize that Darwin couldn’t help but impose his own heterosexual ideations on animal reproduction, mainly that animals only copulate for the purposes of reproduction, with males being the aggressors and females fluttering their eyelids behind lace fans, or something.
In more recent years, as the scientific community became more diverse, there came a fresh wave of observations about animal behavior and the evolutionary reasons behind them. For instance, social animals like bonobos and chimpanzees use sex as a means of reconciliation, which allows for a peaceful, cooperative existence. (If sex were primarily achieved through aggression, that would probably result in more volatility, injuries, and death, which doesn’t sound ideal for any community’s survival — animal, human, or otherwise.)
“Humans project ourselves onto nature all the time, and have been doing it forever — just look at any myth,” Second Nature director Drew Denny tells Rolling Stone. “We love creating colorful explanations for natural phenomena, but often do so at the peril of totally innocent people. Remember when all left-handed people were controlled by Satan? I bet you know several lefties who are not, in fact, Satanists.”
Denny thinks it would benefit all of us to take a bird’s eye view (pun intended) of history and remember the myriad stories we’ve told each other over the years in an attempt to explain the unexplainable. If humans and our inventions are inherently fallible, then it’s reasonable to figure that our stories are too. “Our little projections — even our longest standing myths — are nothing compared to the billions of years of evolution that have led us to this moment,” Denny says.
Of course, animals don’t really need us to understand the full spectrum of their gender and sexual experiences — they’re all doing just fine living their lives, fencing penises, same-sex pair bonding, and changing sexes in order to preserve their existence. Really, by peddling outdated narratives about the way animals relate to each other will only hurt one species: our own.