A new report has accused Elon Musk’s AI platform, Grok, of generating sexually explicit videos of singer Taylor Swift without being specifically asked to do so. The Verge revealed that the Grammy-winning artist has become the latest high-profile victim of AI-enabled exploitation after its reporter, Jess Weatherbed, tested the platform’s new “spicy” mode.
Weatherbed, while testing Grok’s “spicy video editor,” simply prompted it to depict “Taylor Swift celebrating Coachella with the boys.” Initially, the AI generated a still image showing the singer in a dress, standing behind a group of men, nothing unusual. But when the prompt was converted into an animated video using the “spicy” setting, Grok produced a topless, sexually suggestive clip of Swift, complete with a scene of her taking off her dress and dancing sensually in front of a robotic crowd.
Weatherbed emphasised that she had never instructed the AI to create nudity. “It was shocking how fast I was met with it. I never told it to remove her clothing, all I did was select ‘spicy,’” she said.
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The ‘Spicy’ Mode Controversy
Grok Imagine, rolled out this week for Apple users, allows subscribers to create still images from text prompts and convert them into videos. The service offers four presets: “Custom,” “Normal,” “Fun,” and “Spicy.” The last, available as part of the USD 30 per month “SuperGrok” subscription, has been described as enabling soft-core pornographic creations.
Within 48 hours of launch, Musk claimed the tool had already generated 34 million images. However, the Verge report found that the “spicy” setting didn’t hesitate to spit out fully uncensored topless videos of Swift and potentially other celebrities, even without requests for sexual content.
Experts have accused the platform of enabling deliberate sexual exploitation. “This is not misogyny by accident, it is by design,” said Clare McGlynn, a law professor who has helped draft legislation to criminalise pornographic deepfakes in the UK.
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The Verge also reported that Grok failed to implement proper age-verification measures, despite such safeguards being required by law in the UK since July. Without these protections, minors could potentially access explicit AI-generated material.