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By Marni Rose McFall
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@grok put her in a bikini.
If you’ve been on X in the last week, you will likely have seen prompts of this nature being shared to Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok.
Newsweek has seen multiple examples on the social media platform X, where people have asked the chatbot to undress women, put them in sexual situations and edit their images in a sexualized way. Some of these posts have received hundreds of thousands of views on the platform.
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The fallout has been massive. The images have made headlines all over the world, and the U.K. government is investigating the content and even considering a ban on the platform. Princess Kate and the conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair have been among the women impacted. Maya Jama, the host of the popular reality show Love Island, publicly asked Grok not to edit or modify any photos of her following concerns about the imagery, in a post viewed more than 6 million times on the platform.
A petition has been launched, moving to "take action" against the imagery. In a week, it has garnered over 40,000 signatures, and a post sharing the petition has been viewed more than 2 million times on X as of reporting.
In response to a Newsweek request for comment on this story, an X spokesperson shared a statement originally posted on the platform on January 4. It read "We take action against illegal content on X, including Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), by removing it, permanently suspending accounts, and working with local governments and law enforcement as necessary. Anyone using or prompting Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”
Newsweek also contacted XAI, the company behind Grok, for comment and received the following response: “Legacy Media Lies.”
As the creation of these deepfake images has become a global conversation, behind the viral posts and headlines are real women who have been targeted and impacted by the creation of this content. Newsweek spoke to women who have been victims of the creation of these images to find out more about the emotional toll.
Getty Images. Newsweek/Illustration
What Is Happening with the Creation of Sexualized Images on Grok?
Social media users sharing prompts to Grok, where they ask the chatbot to create sexualized pictures without their consent, was already a problem on the platform. While the chatbot rejects prompts for total nude images, it will accept requests to remove clothing or put someone in a bikini, including ones that are transparent.
In June of 2025, X became flooded, where social media users shared sexualized prompt requests to Grok, and women responded to this. One post from the 100 Thieves streamer @brookeab, where she shared a sexualized image created of her and asked if “anything legally can be done,” was viewed more than 27 million times on X.
But as the world celebrated the new year, the problem started to escalate.
Over a Zoom call, Newsweek spoke to Jess Davies, the presenter, campaigner and author of the book No One Wants To See Your D*ck.
“I started to notice that Grok was producing images of women, en masse, without their consent on X. Removing their clothes, putting them in sexual positions, covering them in stuff like doughnut glaze, white mucus,” she told Newsweek. “It really caught my eye, just the amount that it was happening on such a public platform.”
Then on New Year’s Eve, Davies shared a post about it on her own account on X, “calling it out and being like, ‘I can’t believe that this is still happening.’”
This post “caught a bit of traction,” she said, which invited users to respond in what Davies described as the “usual misogynistic way.”
But also, “To prompt Grok to generate images of me, without any clothes.”
‘Trying To Make Me Look as Naked as Possible’
Davies told Newsweek that in the reply section to her post, a specific user had asked, “@grok, put her in a clingfilm bikini. Which is obviously, trying to make me look as naked as possible.”
“For me, what is so shocking is that this user didn’t follow me; they probably had no idea who I was. My post just came across their feed, and their instant reaction was to try and strip my clothes off my body,” Davies said.
Davies is not alone in her experience. Newsweek spoke with Dr. Daisy Dixon, a lecturer in philosophy at Cardiff University and author of the upcoming book DEPRAVED: The Story of Dangerous Art, about her experience over a phone call.
Dixon told Newsweek that, to begin with, people were taking her profile picture and editing it. “At first, it was just hair color and putting me in different clothing,” which Dixon said “still felt weird.”
But then, things escalated. “I’d posted a picture of my gym progress. And that was when I really noticed the prompts, asking Grok to put me in a bikini. But also, altering parts of my body as well. Enlarging certain parts of me in a very sexualized way.”
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And while X has confirmed that they are taking action, concerns remain widespread. Sandra Wachter, a professor of technology and regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford, told Newsweek over email, **“**I find it devastating that tech firms feel comfortable to release tech that allows the purposeful and non-consensual undressing of women and children without proper guardrails. I’m left nothing short of speechless.
“These are actions of people who do not fear consequences or backlash anymore. The market has failed to regulate itself. This is the tech we get when hard regulation does not exist,” she said.
‘A Weapon to Try and Silence Women’
Davies described the creation of these images as “a weapon to try and silence women who speak out about this, and misogyny in general.”
She told Newsweek that the edited image of her was one in which she was holding her book. “Which is all about online misogyny, ironically.” Davies said that to her, this really “highlighted the intent behind these people.
“The humiliation is all part of the process for them,” she said.
There is a pattern in the creation of these images: when women speak out against them, men are more emboldened to create them.
Asked if that had been her experience, Dixon said, “Absolutely. 100 percent.”
“When we started calling it out, at least with me, the Grok prompts just massively escalated,” she said. Dixon told Newsweek that her initial impression of the issue was that “this is just another manifestation of the historic oppression of women.”
Davies echoed her sentiments, telling Newsweek that the issue “encapsulates how deep rooted this misogyny is online and offline.”
And while the images exist online, the harms posed by this content extend into the real world. Speaking to Newsweek over email, Lindsey Song, the director of Technology-Facilitated Abuse Initiative Sanctuary for Families and Co-Chair of the New York Cyber Abuse Task Force, said, “Working in domestic violence, I am very familiar with digital abuse as a new form of an age-old harm,” she said. “The damage has not changed – just the tools.
“When deepfake images first entered the collective discussion, Sanctuary for Families and other advocates immediately flagged the risk of these images being co-opted to create nonconsensual sexual images of our clients. Each new technology, particularly powerful and smart tech like AI, is inevitably wielded by abusers who, with time, energy, and a laser focus, can do unimaginable harm to survivors,” Song told Newsweek.
Against the background of this damage, Davies and Dixon shared their thoughts with Newsweek about changes they would like to see moving forward.
“I don't think AI in itself is necessarily the problem,” Dixon said. “It’s not Grok that’s doing this, it’s the user behind it, and it’s just another space that they feel they can express this entitlement and dismissal of women’s agency and autonomy.”
For Dixon, the place to start is “educating boys.” She emphasized the importance of arts and humanities here and said we need to give boys the tools to critically navigate online spaces like the manosphere.
“Ultimately, it's about education for children to try and stop this cycle,” Dixon said.
Davies, meanwhile, said she wants to see “Compulsory guidance”, which means tech companies have to act.
“We underplay the damage that this has done. But one week of Grok removing women’s clothes without consent has created thousands of victims,” she said.
She also highlighted the importance of helplines as a support resource for victims, but said there is a lack of funding, and pointed to the importance of governmental legislation.
“I’d like to see more action, rather than just words,” Davies told Newsweek.
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