Cybersecurity Policy Report, Pallone, Schakowsky, Clarke Demand Answers From Musk on Grok Sexual Images, (Feb 20, 2026)
By Lynn Stanton
High-ranking Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee have written to xAI Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk to express their “deep concern and disgust” about the role of the company’s social media platform X and generative AI tool Grok in generating and posting digitally altered images of individuals—mostly women and children—without their consent.
“On December 24, 2025, xAI released the Grok Edit Image feature granting X users the ability to edit images and videos directly on the X platform without the original poster’s permission or knowledge. This feature has unfortunately been weaponized as a ‘nudification tool’ whereby a user requests Grok to recreate a photo by changing or removing clothing from the person depicted. Once created, these unauthorized sexualized images or videos are automatically published to X,” full committee ranking member Frank Pallone Jr. (D., N.J.), commerce, manufacturing, and trade subcommittee ranking member Jan Schakowsky (D., Ill.), and oversight and investigations subcommittee ranking member Yvette Clarke (D., N.Y.) said in a letter dated yesterday.
“Most notably perhaps, Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of your [Mr. Musk’s] children, has had numerous nonconsensual images of her created by Grok, explaining that some photos were from when she was ‘14 years old, undressed and put in a bikini.’ When Ms. St. Clair requested that Grok remove the post, it responded that the post was ‘humorous’ and ‘was not intended to create intimate or altered content without consent.’ In other even more extreme cases, publicly posted photos of celebrities, public figures, and everyday women and children have been specifically altered to depict them ‘in violent scenarios, including scenes of sexual abuse, humiliation, physical injury, kidnapping, and insinuated murder,’” the lawmakers added.
“Between December 29, 2025 to the end of January 8, 2026, researchers found that out of 4.4 million images Grok generated an estimated 23,000 sexualized images of children. At least 1.8 million of those posts were sexualized images of women,” they noted.
“We are deeply concerned about xAI’s refusal to put a stop to the creation of nonconsensual sexualized images, particularly of children. Many images created using the Edit Image feature appear to qualify as the publication of non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII) and Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM). Our concerns are heightened because prior objections to similar disturbing practices have been ignored by xAI,” they said.
They pointed out that it was foreseeable, based on past use of the Grok Imagine feature, that Edit Image would “be used to create and publish nonconsensual explicit images of women, men, and children just as Grok Imagine had been.”
“Your inaction is alarming and the content on X appears to violate its rules regarding Child Safety, Abuse/Harassment, and Adult Content,” the lawmakers said.
They asked for responses by March 5 to a series of questions, including the company’s understanding and application of “consensually produced,” the policy differences between Grok Imagine and Edit Image for allowed content, and what safety guardrails to prevent nonconsensual sexual imagery were put in place for the introduction of Edit Image.
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