Last year, Congress enacted the Take It Down Act, which, among other things, criminalizes non-consensual sexually explicit content and requires platforms like X to provide an option for victims to request that content using their likeness be removed within 48 hours. Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar, co-sponsor of the legislation, posted on
Note the “soon” in that sentence. The requirement for platforms to create a notice and takedown system in the law will not take effect until May 19, 2026. Currently, neither X (the platform where the images are being generated via posted signals and hosted) nor X has a formal content removal request process for law enforcement, but general users are advised to go through the Help Center, where it appears users can only report posts that violate X’s rules.
If you want to know what chance the average user has of getting one of these images removed, just ask Ashley St. Clair how successful her efforts were when she flagged a non-consensual sexual image of herself that was shared on X. St. Clair has as much reach as anyone to make a personal plea for a post to be taken down — she’s the mother of one of Elon Musk’s children and has an X account with over a million followers. “It’s ridiculous, I have the most direct line and they don’t do anything,” he told The Guardian. “I complained to
St. Clair’s image was eventually removed, seemingly after it was widely reported by her followers and given attention in the press. But St Clair now claims she was punished for her efforts to raise the issue by being banned from communicating with Grok and having her X Premium membership cancelled. Premium allows him to get paid based on engagement. Grok, which has become the default source of information on this entire situation despite the fact that it’s an AI model incapable of speaking for anyone or anything, explained in a post, “Ashley St. Clair’s x checkmark and premium were removed due to potential terms violations, including her public accusations against Grok for generating inappropriate images and potential spam-like activity.”
Enforcement outside the Take It Down Act is possible, although less straightforward. Democratic Senator Ron Wyden suggested that the content generated by Grok would not be protected under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which generally exempts tech platforms from liability for illegal behavior of users. Of course, it is unlikely that the Trump administration’s Justice Department will pursue a case against Musk’s companies, leaving enforcement efforts to the states.
Outside the US, some governments are taking the issue more seriously. Authorities in France, Ireland, the United Kingdom and India have begun investigating non-consensual sexual images generated by Grok and may eventually bring charges against X and XAI.
But it certainly doesn’t seem like the heads of X and XAI are taking the matter so seriously. As Grok was producing sexualized images of children, Elon Musk, the CEO of both companies involved in the scandal, was actively reposting content created as part of the trend, which included AI-generated images of toasters and rockets in bikinis. As of now, the range of acceptability of X’s position begins and ends at blaming the users. In a post by
If anything, from what Grok has done in recent weeks, it seems like it’s probably closer to what Musk wants from AI. According to a CNN report, Musk is “unhappy with the excessive censoring” on Grok, including being particularly frustrated about restrictions on Grok’s image and video generators. Publicly, Musk has repeatedly talked about Grok’s “spicy mode” and ridiculed the idea of ”awakening” in AI.
In response to a request for comment from Gizmodo, XAI said, “Legacy Media Lies,” the latest automated messages the platform has sent since shutting down its public relations department.
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