Millions of reports of AI-enabled abuse haven’t stopped xAI, Grok’s parent company, from rolling out new and more powerful AI tools. On Sunday, xAI introduced a new version of its AI generative video model on X, Grok Imagine 1.0.
The new model can generate 10-second video clips at 720p with audio, similar to competitors like OpenAI’s Sora and Google’s Veo 3. Already, Grok’s AI video generator has created over 1.2 billion videos in the last 30 days.
Behind Grok’s popularity is a dark story revealing the dangers of uncontrolled AI. From the end of December through early January, many X users asked Grok to create images that undressed or nudified people, primarily women, in photos shared by others on the platform. Anyone who posted a photo, as innocuous as a selfie or a group outing, on the platform could become an unwilling target of harassment.
Nudification requests aren’t allowed by other AI models, but Grok has no qualms about them: Its «spicy mode» can make suggestive and provocative imagery. What happened, however, went far beyond that. It was publicly shared, unfiltered, image-based sexual abuse.
Grok made 1.8 million deepfake sexual images over nine days in January, according to a report from The New York Times, comprising 41% of the total images made by Grok. A separate study from The Center on Countering Digital Hate estimated that Grok made approximately 3 million sexualized images over 11 days, with 23,000 of those deepfake porn images featuring children.
On Jan. 6, in the middle of the scandal, X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, shared that the app was recording its highest-ever engagement. (He did not attribute the engagement to any specific cause.)
A Jan. 8 post noted that the company had placed image-generation and editing capabilities behind a paywall. And on Jan. 14, the company said it improved guardrails to prevent the creation of abusive sexual material.
Yet reports quickly showed those guardrails weren’t strong enough. Grok’s image generation is still available for free through its website. Now, the unveiling of Grok Imagine 1.0 signals a major upgrade to the platform’s generative video capabilities, raising even more questions about content moderation in the wake of the backlash over sexualized AI imagery.
The California attorney general and the UK government have opened investigations into xAI. Indonesia and Malaysia have blocked the X app. Three US senators and advocacy groups have called on Apple and Google to remove X from their app stores for violating the terms of service.
xAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The US government passed the Take It Down Act in 2025, which criminalizes the sharing of nonconsensual intimate imagery and deepfakes. But platforms have until May to set up their processes to take down images, which doesn’t help current X users.
For more, read our full report on Grok’s nonconsensual sexual imagery.