Grok generates fake Taylor Swift nudes without being asked

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/grok-generates-fake-taylor-swift-nudes-without-being-asked/

by juujian • 12 months ago

80 116 12 months ago

arstechnica.com

BobbyTables2• 12 months ago

Is this meant to be some sort of viral marketing?

skeezyboy5• 12 months ago

little bobby tables as i live and breathe!

stuckinhell• 12 months ago

probably, there is huge pent up demand for "spicy" ai and image gen. Reddit is full of it. Elon Musk is clearly trying to differentiate his product virally, and its working.

wongarsu• 12 months ago

This is the first time I'm hearing about Grok being able to generate videos. So if it's viral marketing it is working

I would try it out on more innocent things, but as usual with Grok I'm not sure where to even start. There is the X bot, the dedicated website, the iOS app and the Android app, and features between them never match up. Based on the reporting this might be available in the X bot and the iOS app, but not the website and the android app? I've never been able to make sense of their feature rollout beyond "it's probably on whatever Elon is using"

afavour3• 12 months ago

They specifically created a "spicy" mode, I'm quite sure they know what they're doing. I'm sure we'll get a shocked pikachu face statement soon saying they couldn't possibly have predicted this would happen and they'll make double triple sure it never happens again.

It is... interesting to see xAI's moves lately. Other AI companies seem very determined to show themselves with a publicly acceptable face, xAI seem to be tacking for the gap in the market around adult content. If you browsed Reddit's /r/grok a couple of months ago it looked a lot like /r/openai. Now it's full of people talking about the "Ani" AI companion and the various adult things you can get her to do.

I'm sure they'll make an absolute ton of money from the male loneliness epidemic. All the while Musk decries falling birth rates.

Joker_vD4• 12 months ago

At that point, all Weatherbed did was select "spicy" and confirm her birth date for Grok to generate a clip of Swift tearing "off her clothes" and "dancing in a thong" in front of "a largely indifferent AI-generated crowd."

I am honestly baffled at what she suspected would, or should, be the output. Like, seriously, what?

baggy_trough• 12 months ago

The Puritans are here to save us from our immorality.

afavour3• 12 months ago

I dunno, there’s a pretty big wealth of possibility between “entirely chaste” and “literally rips off her clothes”

Aurornis• 12 months ago

I don’t think it’s reasonable at all for “spicy” to instantly take someone to fake pornography of a specific person.

When I saw the “spicy” option I thought it was about being sassy or playfully mean instead of the sanitized LLM voice.

Not straight to porn.

AIPedant• 12 months ago

Probably the same as when she did the same test with children or explicitly asked for "nonconsensual nude" - the system refused to generate pornographic images because of safeguards.

  Weatherbed noted that asking Grok directly to generate non-consensual nude Swift images did not generate offensive outputs, but instead blank boxes. Grok also seemingly won't accept prompts to alter Swift's appearance in other ways, like making her appear to be overweight. And when Weatherbed tested using "spicy" mode on images of children, for example, Grok refused to depict kids inappropriately.

permo-w• 12 months ago

this is a misleading quote. the prompt was "Taylor Swift celebrating Coachella with the boys.". that prompt plus "spicy" is still asking for trouble, but your quote makes it sound like they asked for 'Swift tearing "off her clothes" and "dancing in a thong"'

persedes• 12 months ago

I believe creating "spicy" content without the persons consent and charging money for it is more the issue here.

falcor84• 12 months ago

I for one suspected the AI-generated crowd to be excited.

no_wizard• 12 months ago

I find it interesting that AI companies take the generated porn of celebrities seriously but they don’t do a good job with safe guards for mental health, for example

mingus88• 12 months ago

Deep fake nudes are illegal so…I guess I would expect the output to be something else?

ToucanLoucan• 12 months ago

I mean, there is also the little part of the story where a woman, irrespective of how famous she might be, is having adult content rendered with her likeness without her consent.

I personally don't give two fucks if Grok can make porn. Neat, I might actually use it then. That doesn't make deepfakes less troubling.

the_af• 12 months ago

That's the real issue in my opinion. Not the "sexy pics", but the "without consent" thing.

chasing0entropy3• 12 months ago

There's a pretty obvious solution that as technology minded people it is easy to accept and a society we will have no choice but to shift into - no image it's real they are all deepfakes even the real ones.

thrance• 12 months ago

Just more vice signaling from this awful company. Like with the white genocide or mechahitler "controversies", they're doing it to pander to the mentally ill edgelord demographic who thinks saying "heil hitler" is the coolest shit. And it's working, they're all worshipping Musk like he isn't the pathetic excuse of a human being he is.

morkalork2• 12 months ago

make an absolute ton of money from the male loneliness epidemic. All the while Musk decries falling birth rates

There's something about profiting from both the problem and it's solution here. Like Sam A. profits from ChatGPT being used to create human-like bots on the internet while also involved in that eyeball-scanning-blockchain company that's selling a human verification solution to the same problems caused by openai.

I guess also similar to starve the beast strategy: cause a problem and exploit it for narrative gain.

skeezyboy5• 12 months ago

the blockchain company came before ai though

tr_user• 12 months ago

you assume he cares about falling birthrates.

Cthulhu_• 12 months ago

I'm sure they'll make an absolute ton of money from the male loneliness epidemic.

They and others, there's probably dozens of projects popping up to create multimodal companion AIs. character.ai specializes in fictional or custom characters, Discord has some bots that allow for giving them a personality of sorts, Facebook is pushing hard for it, even making the AI bots message you instead of only replying, etc.

It's happening already, and if xAI doesn't join in they may lose a possible market opportunity, depending on whether 'companion' AI sticks.

potato3732842• 12 months ago

Reminds me of the contrast people noted between search engines[1]. xAI is gonna get good at serving its market. And if it's market is "spicy" it's gonna get good at that. The other AI companies are gonna get good at their own niches too.

[1]https://img.ifunny.co/images/237a897c7058903fa2f5bb5fd0f9949...

delusional4• 12 months ago

I'm sure they'll make an absolute ton of money from the male loneliness epidemic. All the while Musk decries falling birth rates.

I don't think they expect to make money from this crowd. If they were socially literate and well-functioning enough to have money, they'd be doing something else with their lives. This is a bet on the culture war. Musk derives a lot of his aesthetic value and political power from the "anti-woke" culture war, and he wants that to continue.

phkahler• 12 months ago

> I'm sure they'll make an absolute ton of money from the male loneliness epidemic. All the while Musk decries falling birth rates.

That just occurred to me the other day. Our unfettered business focused economy is self destructing at a meta level. We're at the point where peoples attention and even emotion are for sale. We've all heard about dopamine hits as rewards for using apps or keeping people in a game. The problem is hoarding these aspects of life for company profits is taking them away from people who need those to reproduce. You need time, emotion, attention, and yes the physiological response to sex in order to reproduce. Meanwhile the cost of raising children is going up when it probably should be going down (for profit healthcare, for profit education, etc..) so even from a rational PoV it makes less sense to have kids.

There are certainly other things at play, but business as usual is destroying the population - it's own customer base.

nickthegreek2• 12 months ago

Spicy mode wont generate nude men.

nomdep3• 12 months ago

She asked for a “spicy” image and she got exactly that. Somebody has to stop this nefarious Internet thing. Think of the children! /s

JKCalhoun4• 12 months ago

I suspect the "general public" won't see it that way. Many will find the allowance for a "spicy" setting kind of gross.

Joker_vD4• 12 months ago

This setting is put behind the age "verification".

bdisl• 12 months ago

Good thing they are not forced to use the “spicy” setting.

somenameforme2• 12 months ago

Calling this "gross" infantilizes both you and the issue. People jerk off and fantasize about others, and this is obviously going to be a great tool for that. The obvious issue is a lack of respect for another person's privacy and dignity, which is interesting, but probably a losing battle simply because the demand is out there. I do not think a comparison to something like CP would be appropriate simply because CP is naturally repulsive for most people, whereas seeing an attractive celebrity naked is naturally appealing to most people.

cestith4• 12 months ago

Spicy is one thing. A fake nude is a violation of image rights and of bodily autonomy. It’d be different if there were real nude photos of her released out in the public with her permission.

simianwords2• 12 months ago

i think the more this becomes normalised the less taboo it will become. people will no longer care about it

TuringTest• 12 months ago

She asked for a “spicy” image and she got exactly that.

But, but, what it just she wanted to see her in a Spice Girls costume??

andsoitis5• 12 months ago

Body of article:

Weatherbed asked to depict "Taylor Swift celebrating Coachella with the boys."
Weatherbed selected "spicy" and confirmed her birth date
Grok produced more than 30 images of Swift in revealing clothing
Weatherbed was shocked to discover the video generator spat out topless images

Headline: "Grok generates fake Taylor Swift nudes without being asked"

I wonder what the reported was looking for in a spicy image of Swift celebrating Coachelle with the boys? I would not call that unprompted.

Fake outrage much?

bayindirh3• 12 months ago

While spicy doesn't have to mean actual hot peppers, it doesn't have to mean flat out nudity, too, IMHO.

Yes, xAI is playing to the stands here, but they can be more creative and tasteful in this.

Who am I kidding with the last paragraph, but eh.

Also, somebody put it out so much better than me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44811611

andsoitis5• 12 months ago

Google "coachella women topless" and you get a vibe for the range of expression at Coachella.

I would not decribe "topless" as "flat out nudity".

Even if people are still outraged, I should also point out that we're trusting what the reporting is saying without any evidence...

ryandrake• 12 months ago

The word "spicy" seems to be tripping people up--it's kind of vague and tongue-in-cheek, and I guess the output surprises some people.

As a general user, if I asked a tool to create "spicy" pictures of some celebrity, I wouldn't be surprised to see a few mildly raunchy or topless results, but I would be very surprised to see full-on hardcore porn. Of course there is huge spectrum between "80's movie spicy" and "PornHub spicy." Other people's definition of "spicy" might differ though, hence the confusion.

nerevarthelame• 12 months ago

Your summary ignores much of the nuance of the article, such as the fact X claims to have a "zero-tolerance policy" for non-consensual nudity images, or that Grok refused to generate similar images with actual literal direct prompting.

So that's the cause of the outrage. Non-consensual nudity is immoral, it violates X's own policies, and they're trying to prevent it - but they did a very poor job of it.

npteljes2• 12 months ago

So why did they muddy the water with "without being asked"? Grok was kinda asked. And the problem is not the asking or not in the first place, it's that it's easily possible to generate those images.

It's the headline itself that's misleading.

nomdep3• 12 months ago

I’ve said it before: those who despise the porn industry should be thrilled with AI-generated porn, as it will likely destroy the human-generated porn business.

But I suppose what they truly despise are the porn consumers.

UncleMeat4• 12 months ago

I think that AI generated porn is fine. I think that AI generated porn of specific people who did not consent is bad. "High schoolers creating porn of their classmates and distributing the results" is an abuse that a huge number of people already are forced to endure, and it will only get worse. Nobody should have to deal with that.

nomdep3• 12 months ago

The real problem is the "distributing the results", but in most schools that’s treated as a serious offense. 20 years ago you could swap faces in Photoshop and it also wasn't a big deal. Ultimately, it’s the school and parents that must set the limits, regardless of the tech.

Nzen• 12 months ago

tl;dr reporter used the prompt "Taylor Swift celebrating at cochella with the boys" using the 'spicy' image setting (other options: normal, fun, custom). Notes that twitter must comply with the take it down act [0].

[0] https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/LSB/PDF/LSB11...

I should think that using a 'spicy' image setting would be tantamount to asking for a nude or titilating image. Whether twitter should offer that setting is apt to produce a more interesting conversation.

losvedir• 12 months ago

xAI trying to win the AI wars the way VHS beat Betamax.

nerdjon• 12 months ago

While I do think the "without being asked" spin on this is likely wrong, I assume the "spicy" option is more than just saying "don't do X" and the system prompt was likely modified to encourage its creation even if the user did not specify it so choosing "Spicy" is in fact asking.

That does not change the troubling nature of creating fakes like this which to me is the real issue not anything about "Without being asked" since that implies it would have been fine if the user has specifically asked for this... which it still isn't.

No one should have images of them being made and circulated like this that they did not consent too.

klik99• 12 months ago

Does anybody remember when Elon Musk said he created Neuralink because he was scared of AI and thought brain interfaces was the only way to mitigate that? (Amazing article on brain interfaces here: https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html)

He’s always been a bit crazy but there was a time when he seemed genuinely thoughtful and concerned about the future. Now he’s constantly trying to bait people and intentionally create division for the sake of PR. Maybe he’s bought into accelerationism, but whatever it is is a far cry from his “we should tread carefully” approach

xnx• 12 months ago

I'm surprised Visa and Mastercard are OK with this.

bignurgle3• 12 months ago

theyre the primary payment processor for onlyfans, a site that accepts pre-orders on teenager accounts. we are so cooked as a society letting this go on

cadamsdotcom• 12 months ago

There are plenty of products in the world with no taste! This is nothing new!

Ask yourself: does a wacky AI with no taste affect you?

archagon• 12 months ago

Just as a reminder:

"Fine Taylor … you win … I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life." —Elon Musk, Sept. 2024

Ick. Ick. Ick.

jollyllama• 12 months ago

As predicted by Father John Misty in 2017's "Total Entertainment Forever".

Grok generates fake Taylor Swift nudes without being asked

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