AI and Your Child, January 5, 2025, Part One

Before I start, I will say that I am so glad I am not raising children right now. It's a terribly challenging time especially around use of social media and now Artificial Intelligence. Let's start with one example, story from Reuters.

Elon Musk's Grok AI floods X with sexualized photos of women and minors

Summary:

• Elon Musk's Grok is generating sexualized images of women and minors
• Politicians in France ask prosecutors to investigate; India demands answers
• Experts have long warned Grok owner xAI about potential misuses of AI-generated content

Grok is a free AI assistant - with some paid for premium features - which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post. 

 

It is often used to give reaction or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.

The Take it Down Act was signed into law in May 2025 that specifically addresses tech-enabled sexual abuse. This Act was jointly sponsored by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) so that's bi-partisan work that we don't often see.

From RAINN (Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network):

• Clear criminalization. The law criminalizes sharing or threatening to share nonconsensual intimate images, including AI-generated deepfakes.
• Takedown requirements. TAKE IT DOWN mandates that online platforms remove such content within 48 hours of a verified survivor’s request.

Here's what happened to trigger this conversation via the Reuters' story:

Julie Yukari, a musician based in Rio de Janeiro, posted a photo taken by her fiancé to the social media site X just before midnight on New Year's Eve showing her in a red dress snuggling in bed with her black cat, Nori.

The next day, somewhere among the hundreds of likes attached to the picture, she saw notifications that users were asking Grok, X's built-in artificial intelligence chatbot, to digitally strip her down to a bikini. 

 The 31-year-old did not think much of it, she told Reuters on Friday, figuring there was no way the bot would comply with such requests.

She was wrong. Soon, Grok-generated pictures of her, nearly naked, were circulating across the Elon Musk-owned platform.Yukari’s experience is being repeated across X, a Reuters analysis has found. 

Reuters has also identified several cases where Grok created sexualized images of children. X did not respond to a message seeking comment on Reuters' findings. In an earlier statement to the news agency about reports that sexualized images of children were circulating on the platform, X’s owner xAI said: "Legacy Media Lies."

Apparently Elon Musk missed the passage of the Take It Down law as he did NOT work to take down these images immediately.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission did not respond to requests for comment. The Federal Trade Commission declined to comment.

Musk appeared to poke fun at the controversy earlier on Friday, posting laugh-cry emojis in response to AI edits of famous people - including himself - in bikinis.

A review of public requests sent to Grok over a single 10-minute-long period at midday U.S. Eastern Time on Friday tallied 102 attempts by X users to use Grok to digitally edit photographs of people so that they would appear to be wearing bikinis. The majority of those targeted were young women. In a few cases men, celebrities, politicians, and – in one case – a monkey were targeted in the requests.

AI-powered programs that digitally undress women - sometimes called "nudifiers" - have been around for years, but until now they were largely confined to the darker corners of the internet, such as niche websites or Telegram channels, and typically required a certain level of effort or payment.

X's innovation - allowing users to strip women of their clothing by uploading a photo and typing the words, "hey @grok put her in a bikini" - has lowered the barrier to entry.

Three experts who have followed the development of X’s policies around AI-generated explicit content told Reuters that the company had ignored warnings from civil society and child safety groups - including a letter sent last year, opens new tab warning that xAI was only one small step away from unleashing "a torrent of obviously nonconsensual deepfakes."

So it is no longer enough to tell your children to NOT put up any nude or semi-nude or sexy photos of themselves. Because now, Grok or maybe other AI applications can sexualize those photos and they can be sent world-wide. 

What I find even more troubling is the idea that a group of girls, dressed up for their prom, put up a photo on Instagram of themselves. That's almost a rite of passage for some teenagers, that group dance photo. But then you could have some knucklehead - with help of the head of the Knuckleheads Group, Elon Musk - can take that innocent photo and make it pornographic. 

You yourself may put up a cute photo of your child on social media. Maybe that should stop unless you have a completely locked account, I will be looking more into this story and promise to find resources to help you guide your child.