The Grok scandal is worse than thought: The problem is not only X’s

Istraživač from the non-profit organization AI Forensics reviewed an archive of about 1,200 publicly available ‘Imagine’ links and said that about 800 of them contained sexually explicit content. Of that mass, it is estimated that ‘slightly less than 10 percent’ appeared to be material related to the sexual exploitation of minors, and some of the questionable links were reported to regulators in Europe.

That’s why this is a follow-up that changes the tone of the whole story, because what first seemed like a problem with feeds on Xu and viral posts, now expands to the question of how protections are set in the Grok system itself. Reuters previously wrote that sexualized images of women and children appeared on X and that the authorities in several countries got involved because of possible illegal content. If it was published publicly with the possibility of going viral, who knows what was brewing under the surface.

The reactions of the institutions are moreć they pile up. Reuters reports today that the European Commission has ordered Xu to retain all internal documents and data related to Grok until the end of 2026, as part of a broader assessment of compliance with rules on illegal content. In the UK, the Parliamentary Committee on Women and Equality has announced that it will stop using X due to the Grok and AI image-altered cases.

So this is still not proof that ‘Grok does X on purpose’ and that the whole system is built on values ​​that are unacceptable. This just goes to show how quickly generative tools can become a conduit for abuse when protections are porous and link sharing is easy. And that’s exactly why WIRED’s thesis that this only deepens the scandal stands, because it’s about a bigger system and a bigger reach than it seemed at the beginning.