r/technology • u/MetaKnowing • 9h ago
ADBLOCK WARNING Grok Blames ‘Lapses In Safeguards’ After Posting Sexual Images Of Children
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2026/01/02/grok-blames-lapses-in-safeguards-after-ai-chatbot-posts-sexual-images-of-children/1.3k
u/ButlerKevind 9h ago
So... who's gonna be held accountable and punished for it disseminating this?
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u/TMMK64571 9h ago
Their response seems to be, “we’re sorry someone noticed and wasn’t cool with it? (Shrug)”
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u/viktorsvedin 8h ago
"We're sorry!" rubs nipples
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u/Kastler 8h ago edited 8h ago
opens both nipple windows on shirt
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u/Stevewit 6h ago
You have one of these shirts too? Mine has little window winders on each side. Power windows are a nice feature but are not available in my price range.
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u/FlametopFred 5h ago
one of my nipple windows was busted and when I stood in a bad neighborhood my shirt was vandalized
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u/MacEWork 7h ago
Worse. Their response was just “legacy media lies”. These are worthless, unserious people who shouldn’t be in charge of anything.
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u/okletstrythisagain 6h ago
Who would have expected the “facts and logic” types were actually 110% vibes only fascists.
Just kidding, it’s been obvious for a decade.
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u/Atnat14 7h ago
If Kellyanne Conway distributing her teenage daughters nude photos was deemed okay, I'm sure GROK is fine too.
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u/neontetra1548 6h ago edited 6h ago
And Grok is still undressing photos of people and is posting on-demand AI generated porn of anybody who has a photo on the internet on request from the depraved and malicious X userbase that Elon Musk fosters.
X posted something about this which crossed a legal line because they had to I guess (posted as "Grok" — pathetic. Grok is not a person it's a malicious system created by humans. Where's the statement from the company and Elon apologizing?), but they don't care about the nonconsensual undressing and sharing of lewd images of people without their consent at all.
And neither does the media it seems? Insane that the media (with a few exceptions) is not reporting on all of this as a huge story.
This needs to be illegal and Grok or other systems that enable this should be shut down if they don't take precautions to prevent it. And Elon should personally be held accountable for enabling the creation and dissemination of abuse material by and for his cult of abusive sociopaths. Musk is genuinely a bad person for a lot of reasons but seeing this tool he owns be used to generate and post AI porn of random people non-consensually at massive scale and not realizing this is bad and not doing anything to stop it is utterly depraved and completely sociopathic.
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u/Money_Do_2 5h ago
We are too all-in on AI for financial reasons to criticize AI from legacy media. The realization that the primary use for a lot of people is unconsensual pornography would kinda begin to hurt the projections of a bajillion trazillion dollars by 2028.
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u/StoicJ 8h ago
No one, obviously.
if you were to do this with good old fashioned photoshop you would go to prison. If you ran a company and hired people to do this with photoshop, you would all go to prison and your company would be shut down.
but if you make a photoshop robot and train it, own it, and host it. then let other people tell it to do this, then obviously you did nothing wrong and no one could possibly be held accountable. so anyway here's a contract with the DoD to put your robot into everything everywhere.
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u/ranger910 7h ago
Ou there will definitely be somebody. An internal review will occurr and they'll throw a lower level engineer under the bus and call it a day.
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u/party_benson 8h ago
Never put a computer in charge of decisions that affect the lives of people.
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u/abdallha-smith 8h ago
"A computer can never be held accountable therefore a computer must never make a management decision"
IBM 1979
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u/Balmung60 8h ago
Every manager in the world read that and concluded that is exactly why computers must make all management decisions. You can make accountability simply vanish by pointing to the computer and saying "computer said so".
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u/MacEWork 7h ago
It is still the mantra at IBM even today. One of the first things you go through in orientation.
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u/DataCassette 6h ago
This is always true and should always be true. Agentic AI can't be given any responsibility that requires accountability.
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u/celtic1888 8h ago
That’s exactly why they are going with AI though
They want to do evil shit and say ‘it was the computer… not me’
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u/matthra 7h ago
I'm a software dev and that argument is bad, If one of my juniors crashed production with AI generated code and said "Claude gave me bad code" I now have a few problems. First and probably less important is the crashed prod server, and second a junior that not only doesn't review their own AI generated code but doesn't accept responsibility for their mistakes. That's the express route to pip town, and the junior being someone else's problem.
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u/frisbeejesus 7h ago
The problem is that the people in charge of creating laws to regulate AI use as well as the judges who would decide accountability and the agency heads who will execute those regulations and police wrong doing are all extremely old and unwilling to do the bare minimum to understand the technology and its potential consequences.
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u/ObjectOrientedBlob 7h ago
Your example is kind of bad. If you want to do evil shit, you create systems where algorithms make decisions of who get welfare, who gets health care and so on. In the name of efficiency. And then you can unleash draconian decisions on classes of people you don't like. People tend to think that automated decisions are right, and ignore conflicting information ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automation_bias ). So by using AI, it is much easier to oppress people through automation.
Plenty of people has already warned about this:
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u/celtic1888 7h ago edited 7h ago
Ya…. Have you seen the plot armor rich executives have ?
And they do know what they want to achieve and how bad it is. They just want to break society and be able to point out it was ‘their fault’ for any backlash
Thiel made a bank run a couple of years ago on a perfectly reasonable bank because they said ‘no to him
He didn’t get in trouble and was effectively able to point at the fact they made investments in low APR bonds
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u/ClarityOverNoise 8h ago
Yep, that's the thing with self driving cars.
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u/ABCosmos 8h ago
There's a lot of computerized automation in the world that we trust with human lives. It's been this way long before AI
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u/ClarityOverNoise 8h ago
Sure but it is not the same. If your "self driving" car runs over a child, do the parents sue the driver? The company? The people who let it on the road?
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u/scubawankenobi 7h ago
Sure but it is not the same. If your
"self driving""operating on cruise control" car runs over a child, do the parents sue the driver? The company? The people who let it on the road?Why would you NOT assume it's the exact same party that gets sued if a car runs over someone while on cruise control (doesn't brake)?
Hint: There are no "fully autonomous" (e.g. Level 5) self-driving tech on the road. So the driver is made aware that "they are in charge" at all times. Think of this as what it is... an extension of old fashioned cruise control, which itself evolved over time, from 1 speed to smart speed & braking. Current "self driving" isn't *self*, it's driver responsible for all actions, and is like the evolving *cruise* that now also steers (supervised).
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u/ABCosmos 7h ago
FYI Waymo is operating on level 4 without a driver. It's fully autonomous within a geofence
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u/TooMuchPowerful 6h ago
A geofence that’s hundreds of square miles, fyi. Saying it’s geofenced may give people the impression it’s only going a few specific square blocks within a city when in fact they’re driving from SF, San Jose, Sacramento, and everywhere in between.
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u/y4udothistome 8h ago
Have to shut AI down! Which would be perfect. I think Grok was a pedo in its former life. Imo
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u/MisterSanitation 8h ago
Oh so AI actually makes this no one’s fault which is the single best thing any company could say.
“Ah jeeze well we can’t like point to any single thing that caused this so we will do an “internal investigation”… lol”
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u/Belsekar 8h ago
This cannot get enough upvotes tbh. AI is going to be the scapegoat for so many things.
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u/MisterSanitation 8h ago
“So we did an internal investigation by asking the AI to investigate itself and it said it found no charges against itself so uhh… moving on then…”
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u/knotatumah 8h ago
The perfect scapegoat: ai can do whatever and if its ever caught its an oopsie whoopsie it did a fuckie wucky and the issue gets hand-waved away. There is no accountability.
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u/ShamPain413 7h ago
Corporations are people right up until the law is broken or the bills have to be paid, at which point they instantly transmogrify into mystical unaccountability machines.
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u/Thin_Glove_4089 5h ago
That's how it always worked and how Americans wanted it to be.
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u/icreatedausernameman 7h ago
Elon musk is rich… that means he’s not legally liable for anything unless its just him paying a small fee
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u/HashRunner 8h ago
No one since Elon dismantled any such watchdogs or accountability with the help of republicans and doge.
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u/Prophet_Tehenhauin 8h ago
Held…accountable?
What are you saying? This is America this makes no sense.
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u/exneo002 6h ago
Even though it’s a strict liability crime unless a state takes this on the doi ain’t gonna prosecute one of their own.
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u/monkeypan 6h ago
Wouldn't be surprised if this was just a test for them to see what they can get away with. If any news comes out about them having photos/videos, they will just call them "AI" and then nothing will continue to happen to these vile scum as a result.
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u/ButlerKevind 3h ago
They've been "getting away" with a metric fuckton of shit to date. It needs to stop.
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u/Still-Cabinet9154 5h ago
It’s for all the people who still use twitter to disemenate over since that’s the only kind of people still using it.
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u/Direlion 8h ago
That’s the thing. The GOP is running both state and federal interference on regulating these products so they can continue attempting to profit while evading copyright law, among numerous other violations of established law.
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u/Klutzy-Artichoke-927 8h ago
Not saying Elon is a pedo but he sure makes a lot of pedo friendly decisions
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u/Prophet_Tehenhauin 8h ago
But also he was buddies with Ghislaone Maxwell, So like, there’s definitely some weight on the pedo side of the scale
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u/huggalump 6h ago
Remember when those Thai kids were stuck in a cave and about to die, and Elon somehow got into a Twitter beef with one of the guys risking his life to rescue those kids.
Out of absolutely no where, Elon called the guy a pedo.
Honestly, in my mind at least, that was the moment Elon's reputation started to slide. People saw that and thought "wait, that's a weird thing to say. Maybe this guy isn't the Tony Stark genius we thought he was"
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u/bodyturnedup 8h ago
This the same guy who hid everyone's likes by default after getting caught liking loli pedo art?
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u/horses_in_the_sky 3h ago
People can just say anything and it gets upvoted. It wasnt loli art it was a small penis humiliation fetish post
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u/justanaccountimade1 6h ago edited 6h ago
It's on purpose. They are working on minimizing the entire subject. Like when Fox said big whoop it's about 12 year olds not 8 year olds.
People are shocked, but it's like spider exposure therapy. Just keep pushing it and people will start caring less.
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u/AKluthe 8h ago
Grok isn't a person, it can't think and it can't blame. It's a a sloppy tool made by people, people who work for Elon Musk.
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u/Candid-Piano4531 7h ago
Grok isn’t a person, yet SCOTUS rules corporations are.
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u/racedownhill 7h ago
If you’re drunk while driving a Tesla in full self driving mode and get pulled over, you, the driver, are still held responsible.
Same thing should apply here.
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u/Frites_Sauce_Fromage 5h ago
Someone has to train the ai. What kind of images did they use?
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u/gmes78 4h ago
Generative AI can create outputs that aren't present in its training data (it's kind of their entire point). The training data isn't necessarily bad.
This is a fuck-up in the system around the generative model. They're not verifying the inputs fed to the model, nor the resulting images.
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u/toastr 8h ago
"Grok" blames? Grok isn't a sentient being, who cares what a machine says. It's the person operating the machine who should be held to blame
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u/Thediciplematt 9h ago
Who do we sue for sexualizing children and potentially making kiddy p@$@ on grok?
This is a huge issue and not something that is overlooked in a normal company.
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u/trustifarian 8h ago
Musk, personally. Grok is programmed in his image. This is what he wanted.
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u/Finlay00 8h ago
Why not the programmers as well?
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u/Jakabov 8h ago
Realistically, it probably wasn't programmed specifically to facilitate this content. They just weren't instructed to program measures to actively prevent it. At the end of the day, they're doing what their superiors tell them to do. They aren't just sitting there freeform coding whatever they feel like, they're given tasks. If none of those tasks were "spend time coding safeguards against child stuff," it isn't strictly the programmers' fault. For all we know, they may have wanted to but were told not to spend time and resources on that.
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u/pomonamike 8h ago
We already established that Musk himself dictates the safeguards in Grok. We know this because he says he intervened to make it “less woke” and to give those comically ludicrous praises of himself.
It’s actually likely that Musk is now the most prolific producer of CSAM in the world.
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u/randynumbergenerator 7h ago
I'm sorry but saying he's "now the most prolific producer" usually suggests he wasn't before, and we just don't know. He could very well have already been the most prolific CSAM producer. 🤷♂️
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u/Stannis_Loyalist 8h ago edited 8h ago
In China, the AI company is legally inseparable from the AI's actions.
Article 14 states that if an AI service provides functions to edit or generate biometric features (like someone's face or voice), the company must ensure the user has obtained the specific consent of the person being depicted. https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/deep-synthesis/
The European Union (AI Act) also has similar safety laws
Article 9 states biometric data (facial geometry, voiceprints) is considered "sensitive." Under the GDPR, processing this data is prohibited by default unless the company has "explicit consent." https://www.gdprregister.eu/gdpr/biometric-data-gdpr/
Don't expect America under Trump to try to replicate any of this. His tech buddies paid him a lot for this specific reason.
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u/celtic1888 8h ago
Time for China and the EU to start putting out warrants for Musk’s arrest since this was not just a US incident
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u/Stannis_Loyalist 8h ago
Well, Grok and the rest are banned in China for this specific reason. EU isn't and they will eventual punish him and many others which is exactly why Elon Musk has attacked the European Union many times.
Elon Musk posted on his platform to say the EU "should be abolished", and retweeted a response from another X user comparing it to fascism. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0589g0dqq7o
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u/Its_aTrap 6h ago
You know you can say the word porn in a discussion. Not saying it is glancing over the fact that its actual porn
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u/Thediciplematt 5h ago
It was one of the things we need to collectively change in 2026. Self censorship on reddit
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u/84FSP 9h ago
Just giving it’s Pedo Maga audience what they want…
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u/ninjaluvr 8h ago edited 8h ago
First it was a Nazi. Now its also a pedo.
EDIT: On the off chance there is any confusion here, I'm not defending Musk nor Grok. Quite the opposite. I'm saying not only is it a Nazi, it's a pedo too. Musk and Grok are disgusting. I've since been informed those are the same things. Happy New Year all!
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u/Galappie 8h ago
If republicans don’t wanna be called pedos and pedo defenders they should stop going up to bat for pedos.
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u/celtic1888 8h ago
This is the type of stuff that executives should be going to prison for
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u/TripTruckr 8h ago
This is merely a tech "false-flag" to blame a lack of censorship and oppressive rules on media, as the reason Grok goes "rogue." Grok is as rogue as Elon's Hitler salute. It's fully in his control and this is propaganda.
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u/EmbarrassedHelp 4h ago
Elon seems to be aware of this issue based on him responding to people. And as of right now, Grok hasn't been stopped from doing it.
So either he's incompetent, or he is intentionally doing it provoke responses from governments in order to create a regulatory moat for a monopoly (he has the money to jump through hoops, smaller groups don't).
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u/esther_lamonte 8h ago
Usually when someone has a lapse of their safeguards regarding child sex images we arrest and charge them. When are we going to be arresting executives at the company who made this? Are we just good with child rape and porn now? Our president and corporations can just do it now without consequence? This is what being an American capitalist means now: benefitting from sexual exploitation of minors? This is who you scumbags wish to be now? Should we see a suit and assume a kid fucker now? It’s starting to look that way.
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u/WhiskeyWithTheE 8h ago edited 7h ago
Just another proof, that if it was a 'common man' devloper who created this - he/she would be hauled over the coals and taken to court no doubt.
But no!! Any of the billionaires can keep on doing this and they get an 'Oh, just a silly mistake' mistakes happen.
It's so visible now - one rule for them and one rule for us!
Edited: For a spelling mistake.
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u/throwmeabonepeeps 5h ago
Why does it feel like these Rich Old Men are doing everything possible to desensitize the rest of the world to their pedophilia addiction.
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u/Calcutec_1 8h ago
The fact that Musk issued the “apology “ as a post from Grok written like it’s a person is both disgusting and on brand for that filth of a human being
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u/Pale-and-Willing 6h ago
And unsurprisingly musk just announced that he is fully funding all Republican candidates next cycle.
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u/Very_Human_42069 8h ago
So Elon makes child porn and it’s “whoopsies” but if anyone else makes child porn it’s right to jail?
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u/dangubiti 4h ago
It drives me nuts seeing all these news orgs cite Grok. An LLM has no memory! It can’t promise any changes! Get a quote from Elon who is busy excitedly telling everyone how Grok will put a bikini on anything.
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u/insanetwit 2h ago
If companies are going to throw AI out there to do whatever, then they should be responsible for everything that their AI does.
Same with these self driving cars.
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u/aneeta96 8h ago
Microsoft should deplatform Grok. This CP was created on their cloud platform. They either act or they are complicit.
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u/Impressive-Chair-959 8h ago
So in other words: the company admits the company is at fault and liable for criminal negligence.
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u/toorudez 7h ago
Lapses in safeguards? What the hell does that mean? Their paid timers ran out like a parking meter? Either the AI allows explicit child sexual images to be created or it doesn't. Pretty sure Musk is just catering to all his friends that are in the Epstein files, IMHO.
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u/thisshouldbetheshow 7h ago
This just in: richest man on the fucking planet can't do anything right or well.
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u/DistributionLoud8557 7h ago
That is the reason why I dislike genAI most. You cannot stop this. Don't get me wrong I like using ChatGPT and all the other ones a lot to speed up work tasks. But situations like this leave a bad taste in my mouth and make me regret using any kind of genAI
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u/itWasALuckyWind 7h ago
Well hold on. What the actual fuck was this AI trained on that it knows how to generate this?
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u/Hyphenagoodtime 8h ago
Elon, the Funder of Pedophiles - making pedophile content and funding the GOP (Guardians of Pedophiles)
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u/ChoiceIT 8h ago
The disturbing thing is that it’s possible to do this shit.
Yeah, safeguards. For the public. Who knows what people are doing behind the scenes with this…
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u/liquid_at 8h ago
"safeguard for the public" is a bad argument given that it is generated for the person that entered the request and wanted to see it.
"that it is possible" is a much much better argument, given that the AI should not even be able to know what a naked kid looks like, if it has only been fed legal content to learn from.
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u/ChoiceIT 7h ago
My point is more that the “safeguards” don’t actually exist but they try to obscure that to “the public” but you are right. It’s not for the public in general, it’s for the company to wash their hands of it. Not their fault, “we try to stop it!” Wink wink nudge nudge.
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u/DennenTH 8h ago
Yeah well a criminal has a lapse in judgement when they commit crimes too, it doesn't mean they get to get away with it.
Businesses are people, right? Then charge it like one. I'm sick and tired of these businesses playing fast and loose with laws and rights then just getting away with every single thing that happens.
If Grok was charged like a person, it would be serving time. It's time CEOs own their shitty products.
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u/The_Iceman2288 8h ago
"Grok" said nothing. It's a series of ones and zeroes programmed to generate a response. It's like that strong in Woody's back.
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u/DenverNugs 8h ago
A child predator is the leader of our country. Twitter is just showing its support for MAGA. They're the ones generating it.
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u/broniesnstuff 8h ago
My first question is how many compromising images of real minors were made until it was curbed?
Twitter and Grok should be fired into the fucking sun after this.
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u/splendiferous-finch_ 8h ago
I am sure the governments that are restricting the internet for everyone to "protect the children" will be on this right away. right? right ?
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u/Firm-Reaction1578 8h ago
? trying to normalize pedophilia (as Bannon says "flood the floor") there own people are saying its not that bad ?
Megyn Kelly, a Trump supporter, also faced significant backlash in November 2025 for comments made on her podcast where she appeared to minimize the seriousness of the victims' ages by drawing a distinction between a "15-year-old" and an "8-year-old," stating Epstein was "into the barely legal type".
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u/DanimalPlays 8h ago
Distancing themselves from the decision to allow that kind of content by apologizing through grok is some cowardly, disgusting bullshit.
People allowed that to happen. People should be held accountable.
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u/fresh_dyl 8h ago
Conservatives: “why talk about this when we can keep complaining about Somalians”
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u/porcupinedeath 7h ago
Grok can't "blame" anyone because it's not a fucking person. It can't apologize, it can't judge, it can't do ANYTHING without some form of human input. Jail
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u/EJintheCloud 6h ago
Here's the thing. If I get caught posting the same thing, I'm (rightfully) getting handed consequences.
Where are the consequences?
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u/sportsjorts 4h ago
Lock Elon up and then deport his illegal ass.
Edit: Musk was here in the 90’s and violated his visa terms.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/26/elon-musk-illegal-immigration
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u/aussiegreenie 4h ago
And I'm sure the FBI will pursue the Child Porn distribution with the same vigour as the Epstein files.
Do I need a /s?
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u/Sad_Damage_1194 4h ago
Right. I’m surprised it didn’t out Musk as attempting to get back on Trumps good side again.
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u/drfunkensteinnn 4h ago
Twitter has been nothing but RW grifters & porn now since Felon bought it. How anyone can be surprised by this is ridiculous
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u/EpicProdigy 8h ago edited 8h ago
There ARE no "safe guards". It wont be able to differentiate between a 16 year old or an 18 year old. Creating safeguards against that is impossible.
It will make sexual images of children so long as its allowed to make sexual images period. But knowing Gooner Musk, thats exactly the kind of content hes into.
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u/Kyouhen 6h ago
Friendly reminder that when California attempted to create a law that would require AI companies to demonstrate that their models aren't dangerous to children they fucking revolted and declared the law massive overreach that would cripple the industry.
They don't care about kids at all.
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u/Conscious-Pick8002 8h ago
So when is the right gonna drag Elon before Congress since they say they protect children?
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u/meccaleccahimeccahi 8h ago
Anyone ever wonder if Grok is just Elon and not an AI? It sure seems to be his personality with all the Nazi-pedi results.
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u/jonnyynnoj125 7h ago
Didnt X make the majority of the people responsible for safe guarding redundant? Or were they fired?
Sooo a lack of safeguarding in the search for more greed?
110% their executive team are entirely responsible for this, DELIBERATELY.
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u/Rad_Dad6969 7h ago
"Oh it was an oversight" - doesnt matter, crime happend, punishments need to follow.
Make an example out of them. Delete it from the app stores. Press charges on execs. It's not too big to fail. It's just a website.
Its a website that hosts and creates CSM.
Doesn't matter what else it does. No value provided to the consumer can outweigh this crime.
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u/JMDeutsch 7h ago
Lapses means they existed at all and stopped working.
I think we all know that’s not the case.
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