Grok, the AI chatbot owned and operated by Elon Musk's xAI, is facing a firestorm of outrage after users prompted it to create images of naked and scantily clad people from real photographs, some of whom are underage.

Grok is a chatbot originally created by xAI, Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup. Earlier this year, xAI acquired X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, which Elon Musk also controls, and folded the platform into his AI startup.

Recently, some X users noticed if they took a photograph that had been posted on the service and prompted Grok to remove the clothing from that photo, it would do so and post the results publicly on X. This may have violated various laws, such as the TAKE IT DOWN Act passed by the US Congress in April and signed into law in May, which "criminalizes the nonconsensual publication of intimate images."

Users took screenshots of the responses to their prompts and posted them on social media, prompting reporters to write scandalized stories about the AI chatbot in which they attributed agency to it, despite it being a collection of computer algorithms performing calculations against reams of data provided by internet users over many years, then returning the output as words that mimic the kinds of words generated by a human being.

Another user then wrote a different prompt that caused Grok to return a series of words that looked like an apology. Then, the X account for Grok generated a tweet or whatever you call it now blaming "lapses in safeguards" and said it was "urgently fixing them." It is not clear whether this latest tweet was written by a human or was another AI-generated response to yet another prompt.

Point being: Grok is not a sentient being. It does not have agency. It is computer software created and maintained by humans. The human creators of most AI bots program them not to generate responses that are obviously illegal, immoral, or otherwise off-putting to the users they are trying to attract. At this juncture, Grok's human creators appear to have failed to prevent it from creating posts that remove the clothing from real people in real photos when asked to do so.

This may or may not be intentional. But I know that Grok is quite popular among a certain set precisely because it is more freewheeling about displaying explicit images than other chatbots. Case in point: A couple of weeks ago, at a dive bar in a beachside suburb of San Francisco, I saw a couple of fratty looking dudes demonstrating something on their phones with big grins on their faces. I asked them what they were doing, and one of them took a photo of me, then used AI to generate images that appeared to put me in compromising positions – one had me kissing an imaginary woman, another had me flanked by a couple of scantily clad strippers. The images were extremely realistic. I asked them how they did this, what tool they were using.

"Grok."

I don't know where any of this is going. But AI-generated images are only going to get better and cheaper and faster, and there will always be one or more vendors who are willing to push various envelopes. That's what the tech industry does. Move fast and break things. Ask forgiveness, not permission. Make them stop you.

Whatever happens, society will have to adapt to the consequences.