One Saturday afternoon, Kendall Mayes was mindlessly scrolling through X when she noticed a disturbing trend on her feed. Users called on Grok, the platform’s own AI feature, to “undress” images of women. Mayes, a 25-year-old media professional from Texas who uses X to post photos with friends and keep up with news, didn’t think it would affect her. Until it happened.
“Put her in a tight, clear, sheer bikini,” one X user ordered the bot under a photo Mayes posted when she was 20. Grok followed the request. And replaced her white shirt with a see-through bikini top.
The waistband of her jeans and her black belt dissolved into thin, sheer strings. The sheer top made the upper half of her body appear realistically naked.
Digital undressing without consent
Hidden behind an anonymous profile, the user’s page was full of similar images of women who had been digitally altered and sexualized without consent. Mayes wanted to insult the faceless user. But she decided to simply block the account. She hoped that would be the end of it. Soon after, however, her comments filled up with more pictures of her in see-through bikinis and skin-tight latex bodysuits. Mayes says all of the requests came from anonymous profiles that also targeted other women. Although some user accounts have been suspended, some of Mayes’ images on X are still online at the time of publication.
The realistic look of the images frightened her. The edits were neither obviously exaggerated nor cartoonish. In our conversation, Mayes reiterated, stunned, that the photo edits closely resembled her body. From the hollow of her collarbone to the proportions of her chest and waist. “To be honest, I said on social media, ‘That’s not me,'” she admits. “But in my head it’s like, ‘That’s not far from my body.'”
A viral loophole
Mayes wasn’t alone. In the first week of the new year, Grok’s “getting naked” loophole went viral. Every minute, users asked Grok to “undress” images of women – and even minors. Common requests included “get her naked,” “make her turn around,” and “make her fat.” Users got creative. They asked Grok to generate images of women in “clear bikinis” to get as close to fully nude depictions as possible. In one case reviewed by ROLLING STONE, a user asked Grok to turn a woman’s body into a “corpse on a table in the morgue” to be autopsied. Grok complied with the request.
After initial reactions from owner Elon Musk with laughing emojis, xAI said it had updated Grok’s restrictions and limited the image generation feature to paying subscribers. Musk claimed he was “not aware of any nude images of minors generated by Grok.” In another response to an (A request for comment to xAI received an automated response.) However, many existing image edits remain online.
Political and social pressure
Last week, gender justice organization UltraViolet published an open letter co-signed by 28 civil society organizations calling on Apple and Google to remove Grok and X from app stores. (Earlier this month, Democratic senators also called for the apps to be removed from stores.)
“This content is not only shocking, humiliating and abusive, but also violates Apple and Google’s stated policies,” said Jenna Sherman, campaign director for UltraViolet.
According to researchers cited by Bloomberg, over 7,000 sexualized images per hour were generated by Grok over a 24-hour period. Something Sherman calls “completely unprecedented.” Sherman argues that limiting Grok to paying users is an inadequate response. “If anything, they are now monetizing this abuse,” she says.
“It almost looks like it could be my body”
For Mayes, X used to be the “fun” corner of social media — an app where she could express herself freely. But as harassment and bullying have become normal on the platform, she is considering leaving the app. She stopped uploading pictures of herself. She thinks about what her employer or colleagues might think if they found the explicit images.
“It’s something I wouldn’t wish on anyone,” Mayes said. “Not even to my enemies.”
Emma, a content creator, was at the supermarket when she saw the notifications of people asking Grok to undress their pictures. She mostly posts ASMR videos in which she whispers into microphones and taps fidget toys with her nails to make tingling noises. The 21-year-old, known online as Emma’s Myspace and referred to only by her first name, has amassed 1.2 million followers on TikTok alone.
Numbness overcame Emma as the images finally appeared in her timeline. A selfie of her with a cat had been turned into a nude photo. The cat was removed from the photo, says Emma, and its upper body was shown naked.
Lack of trust in platforms
Emma immediately made her account private and reported the pictures. In an email response seen by ROLLING STONE, X user support asked her to upload a picture of her government-issued ID so the report could be reviewed. Emma replied that she was uncomfortable with it. In some cases, says Ben Winters, director of AI and privacy at the Consumer Federation of America, uploading such documents is a necessary step in social media reporting. “But if the platform repeatedly goes out of its way to avoid earning your trust,” he says, “that’s not an acceptable outcome.”
Emma has been the target of sexualized deepfakes in the past. That’s why she pays close attention to her clothing in the content she posts online and prefers loose hoodies instead of low-cut tops. But no previous deepfake appeared as lifelike as the images Grok was able to create. “This new wave is too realistic,” says Emma. “It almost looks like it could be my body.”
“Handing a loaded gun”
Last week, Emma paused from her usual content to post a 10-minute video warning her followers about her experience. “Women should give up their bodies as soon as they post a photo of themselves,” says Emma. “Everything they post can be taken off in any way anyone wants and you can do whatever you want with that photo of you.”
There was a lot of support, but also more harassment. On Reddit, users attempted to track down and distribute Emma’s images. During our conversation, she checked to see if some of the image edits were still online on X. It was you. “Oh my God,” she says, letting out a resigned sigh. “It has 15,000 views. This is so sad.”
According to Megan Cutter, director of victim services at the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, this is one of the biggest challenges faced by victims of digital sexual violence. “Once the image is created, even if it is removed from the platform it was originally posted on, it could have already been screenshotted, downloaded and shared,” Cutter says. “This is something extremely complex for people to deal with.”
Legal steps and social consequences
As counterintuitive as it may seem, Cutter recommends that those affected secure evidence of the images via screenshot to help law enforcement authorities and platforms intervene. Victims can file reports at StopNCII.org, a free tool from the Revenge Porn Hotline that helps identify and remove non-consensual intimate images, or NCII.
“It’s not the abuse that’s new, it’s not sexual violence that’s new,” Cutter said. “This tool is new, and it enables dissemination on a scale that we have not seen before and for which we as a society may not be prepared.”
On Tuesday, senators passed the Defiance Act, a law that would allow victims of non-consensual sexual deepfakes to seek civil damages. (Now it goes to the House of Representatives for a vote.) The attorney general of California also opened an investigation into Grok, following the example of other countries.
According to a 2024 report by the British non-profit organization Internet Matters, an estimated 99 percent of all nude deepfakes are of women and girls. “A lot of these ‘get naked’ apps are little things that pop up and can easily be busted and condemned,” Winters says. Last year, Meta sued the operator of CrushAI, a platform for creating nude deepfakes, for violating longstanding rules. In 2024, Apple removed three generative AI apps used to create nude deepfakes following an investigation by 404 Media. Winters said Grok and
“Please feel free to do whatever you want with it.”
“There is less willingness among regulators, advertisers and others to confront it,” Winters says.
This reluctance further increases the risks of Grok’s “naked” abilities. “If a company can do something like this and not be held fully accountable,” Winters says, “that sends a signal to other Big Tech giants that they can take the next step too.”
At her home in Texas, Emma feels dejected as countless photo edits continue to circulate online. She fears trolls could send the pictures to her sponsors and thereby damage her professional relationships. She’s heard the argument that the people encouraging Grok to create illegal content, rather than the tool itself, should be held responsible – but it doesn’t entirely convince her. “We’re basically handing them a loaded gun for free and saying, ‘Please feel free to do whatever you want with it,'” she says.