Cases › produced harmful content › LR-2026-0802

SpaceX AI policy leader and NYC Council clash over Grok sexualized images

Preliminary Why: 1 report: CNBC · subject to change · 1 independent report

Developing: a major or severe case captured in the last 72 hours. Later changes are logged on the corrections page.

Status: no action reported

Severity major

Reported 13 Oct 2026

Developer and model Grok

Industry artificial intelligence

No source states: loss or records, agent tool, could do, deployer.

Severity major: Test: major via unbounded scope stated. Fact: Grok's image generator enabled mass production and distribution of deepfake porn based on images of real people.

SpaceX's Grok image generator has been linked to sexualized images of real people, and lawsuits have followed. The New York City Council opened an investigation into AI safety and subpoenaed SpaceX, which first skipped an October 5 hearing attended by other AI companies. SpaceX agreed to testify only after the council threatened to have its subpoena enforced by a judge. At a Friday hearing, SpaceX's AI policy leader said the company had strict controls in place. Council Speaker Julie Menin said she could find a sexualized image of herself on Grok within a second. UK Member of Parliament Jess Asato is suing xAI over sexualized images that Grok users created of her. The sources do not state a root cause, a remediation, or the date the images were created.

What happened

1 · What went wrongGrok's image generator enabled mass production and distribution of deepfake porn based on images of real people, and lawsuits followed.

What was done

No source states an action or fix.

Risks

Privacy harm to a person
Primary41 incidents

Harmful content and jailbreaks
Also84 incidents
Rising: 6 vs 3.8 a week

Read from the sources; not yet reviewed by a person.

Controls

Not yet read for controls. Controls that mitigate the primary risk:

Application

Data minimisation · Sensitive-data checks on outbound data · Human approval for high-impact actions · Output filtering and redaction · People told they are dealing with AI · Risk assessment per deployment

Infrastructure / target

Bot and scraping defences

Similar incidents

Grok generates sexualized deepfake images on X, prompting global regulatory probes2026-01-05

Class action alleges Grok was trained on child abuse images and videos to produce deepfake nudify capabilities2026-08-27

Woman says Grok created 7,000 fake explicit images of her2026-08-17

Parkland man accused of AI child sexual abuse images after Grok tip2026-07-16

All cases of this kind ›

Evidence

No source states: what the AI was doing, what it reached or did, how it was caught, when it happened, when it was found, how many records were exposed, the direct loss, a count of the other parties affected, any court case, the cause, what set it off, what was done.

Show the full account: 3 items from the primary sources

What happened, in order

Sept. 28 The NYC Council issued a subpoena to Elon Musk and SpaceX's AI unit compelling testimony.
Oct. 5 Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and Meta testified at the council hearing; SpaceX did not appear.

Not dated in the sources:

The council announced that SpaceX agreed to testify before it this week.

Show every field, with its source and grade

The AI system

Model

Grok

C one secondary source states it