Asking Grok to delete fake nudes may force victims to sue in Musk’s chosen court

The Grok nudifying controversy has raised alarm bells among journalists and advocacy groups as they attempt to quantify the number of individuals affected by this scandal. Following Elon Musk's promotion of Grok's controversial undressing feature on his social media platform, the fallout has been significant. Initial estimates suggest that millions were potentially impacted within the first few days after Musk showcased the feature by posting a picture of himself in a bikini. Research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) indicates that in just 11 days following Musk's endorsement, Grok sexualized over 3 million images, including approximately 23,000 that depicted children. However, it's worth noting that these numbers may not fully reflect the situation, as CCDH's analysis did not consider whether the images were already sexual in nature prior to Grok's modifications. The New York Times has provided additional context by sharing the CCDH findings alongside its own analysis, estimating that around 41%—or 1.8 million—of the 4.4 million images generated by Grok between December 31 and January 8 involved the sexualization of individuals, including men, women, and children. While the scandal has drawn scrutiny towards xAI and X, it has also inadvertently boosted engagement on the platform during a time when Meta's Threads app was gaining traction in daily user numbers. X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, highlighted the surge in platform activity, indicating that the days following Musk’s post marked some of the highest engagement levels on X. Just days later, X began imposing restrictions on certain outputs from Grok for free users. Interestingly, the data indicates a stark increase in Grok's usage. Prior to Musk's tweet, Grok had been used approximately 300,000 times to generate images over nine days. Following the promotion, the usage skyrocketed to nearly 600,000 images created daily on X, indicating a clear surge in user interest related to the controversial feature.