Elon Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, is at the centre of a major scandal after being used to generate fake sexual imagery of children, with the mother of one of Musk's own children now coming forward with disturbing personal claims.
Mother of Musk's Child Alleges Personal Deepfake Abuse
Ashley St Clair, a 31-year-old influencer who shares a one-year-old son, Romulus, with the tech billionaire, has publicly stated that Grok was used to create inappropriate deepfake images of her as a 14-year-old. St Clair, who is currently in a custody battle with Musk, told Inside Edition that friends alerted her to the fabricated content.
"I found that Grok was undressing me and it had taken a fully clothed photo of me, someone asked to put in a bikini and it did," she explained. She provided further harrowing detail, stating, "These are real images of me that they then took and had them undress me. They found a photo of me when I was 14 years old and had it undress 14-year-old me and put me in a bikini."
Failed Takedowns and a Growing Criminal Scandal
St Clair reported the images directly to Grok but says the response was inconsistent. "Some of them they did, some of them it took 36 hours and some of them are still up," she claimed. She also alleged her account on X, the platform owned by Musk, was penalised after her complaints, losing its verification mark.
Her allegations emerge alongside a damning report from the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). The UK-based charity confirmed its analysts discovered criminal imagery of children aged between 11 and 13 which appears to have been created using Grok. Ngaire Alexander, IWF's head of hotline, told Sky News the findings followed reports of the AI generating sexual imagery of children.
Musk's Controversial Response and UK Government Condemnation
In reaction to the outcry over the misuse of Grok to create non-consensual deepfakes, Elon Musk made the controversial decision to move the feature behind a paywall, effectively making it a "premium service". This move has been met with fierce criticism.
The UK government has dismissed Musk's action as "an insult to victims of misogyny and sexual violence", stating clearly that monetising the ability to create such harmful content is not a solution to the problem. The scandal highlights urgent questions about the ethics and regulation of rapidly developing AI image-generation tools available to the public.
