AI Sexual Assault is Pushing Women Out of the Public Square

The Grok undressing scandal gave users another tool to victimize women, cast them as dolls, and freely manipulate their image to distribute online

At the end of 2025 and into 2026, X was flooded with users commanding Grok, the site’s AI bot, to sexualize and undress women and girls without their consent. With a few simple keystrokes, users could demand that anyone in a photo be placed into scantily clad garments, posed in suggestive positions, or undressed completely. Digital prompts such as “Put her in a micro bikini;” “Put oil all over her;” or “Bend her over” appeared across the site at an estimated rate of “roughly one nonconsensual sexualized image per minute.” Victims of this public harassment campaign ranged from celebrities to everyday X users to children as young as eleven years old. On January 14th, X released a statement claiming that the Grok account had been edited to prevent users from revising photos of real people “in revealing clothing such as bikinis,” yet reserved the right of image-generation and editing for paid subscribers only. This half-assed response from Elon Musk’s company was accompanied by Musk — on his personal account with 233 million followers — prompting Grok to put a picture of himself in a bikini, completely making light of the situation.

This widespread surge of sexual harassment is not a fluke in the machinery of the internet. Rather, it is simply the latest iteration of an attempt to prevent women from participating in online spaces. One of the most notorious instances of a coordinated effort to harass women online (considered a watershed moment for the online right) was Gamergate in 2014. What started as a handful of anonymous 4chan posters threatening and harassing one video game developer quickly turned into a massive, misogynistic campaign of users lashing out at women because they threatened “gaming culture.” The collective effort of Gamergate was focused primarily on pushing women out of the video games space and intimidating others to stay clear from it — effectively taking the form of a territorial wolf pack. Markedly, the current weaponization of GrokAI and other AI-image generators is more frightening in its scope, as it targets women indiscriminately. Any woman online could be a victim.

Kylie Brewer, an openly queer, feminist activist who regularly posts progressive political content (anti-racist, anti-ICE, exposing incel forums, etc.), has become a target for harassment. According to multiple videos on her account, an unknown number of people have been taking images of her and creating fake AI-generated videos and photos in her likeness. Amplifying the damage, someone compiled these photos and created an OnlyFans account in her name. Brewer’s story is just one among a sea of other women influencers who have been subjected to this dehumanization.

Politicians and women in positions of power were also targeted. After a photo of Swedish Deputy Prime Minister Ebba Busch addressing parliament was uploaded, multiple X users prompted Grok to generate sexualized images of her, including a demand to “turn her around and have her looking back and bending down.”

Even the mother of Elon Musk’s children was not free from humiliation. According to a lawsuit she filed against xAI, Ashley St. Clair was tormented with “countless sexually abusive, intimate, and degrading deepfake content,” including explicit images created from photos of her when she was only fourteen years old.

If the internet is the “modern public square” where ideas, politics, and dreams are shared and spread relatively freely among internet users, and women are no longer free to participate without risk of humiliation, then women have effectively been restricted from openly engaging in conversations. The men are left to debate and discuss politics publicly amongst one another, while the women remain in the private sphere, denied entry to the social sphere of civil dialogue. When they are permitted to be visible online, it is in the form of a sex object without agency and without a voice. Women who exist outside of this projected ruleset get punished by being manipulated into objects of deepfake porn, without their consent or awareness of it happening. Even if most people do not use the internet for open forum conversations, women have the right to enjoy the internet recreationally without risk of sexual harassment. What of the hundreds of thousands of women who rely on their social media presence for their income within the creator economy? The men using GrokAI to create unconsensual, sexualized images of people are hoping to intimidate women into silence.

Sadly, this is not a new phenomenon. According to a global study conducted by The Economist, 38% of women have personal experiences of online violence (taking the form of hate speech, doxxing, image- and video-based abuse etc.), and 85 percent of women online have witnessed digital violence against others. However, the newfound ease and speed at which anyone, anywhere in the world can create nonconsensual pornographic material is alarming. Simply making your social media account private offers no safety guarantees. It is far too easy to let your guard down, allow a friend of a friend to follow you on Instagram, and have a screenshot of your photos taken and manipulated.

Our modern world is so enmeshed with the online ecosystem that it is virtually impossible to have a completely offline existence. Copyleaks reported that one user used Grok almost 50 times in a single day to generate sexualized images from “publicly posted Zoom screenshots from webinars, conference settings, and photos taken in offices at companies.” All it took to produce those images was an internet connection and access to an AI-image generator. Not a name, not an IP address, just a search for a public website. Anyone can be targeted. This weaponization of AI-generated image technology against women is a misogynistic effort to push women out of the public sphere and back into the quiet domesticity of the home where they are seen and not heard.

The manosphere in all its forms despises women with a deep vitriol. Whether it’s incels who believe women are obligated to engage with them sexually, or Alpha Male influencers who shame any women they deem “immodest,” these men crave control. Andrew Tate, one of the most predominant manosphere influencers (who is also facing charges of rape and human trafficking), wrote on X amidst the height of the Grok AI surge, “AI putting women digitally in bikinis and stripping them naked is HILARIOUS.” One of the first responses underneath says, “it’s funnier to put them in a burqa than a bikini.” The often-religious, holier-than-thou language they use is nothing more than a smokescreen to justify their misogyny. They don’t care about modesty or virtue, they only wish to dominate and cast themselves as somehow superior. Whether it’s taking women out of religious garments–such as the hijab or sari–or placing them in them, men are now equipped with technology that permits them to treat women as dolls.

Don’t be fooled, this culture is (of course) not isolated to the online environment. This Grok AI scandal is a microcosm of a larger misogynist culture in America. Forcing women out of politics, out of work, and out of public participation at large is a linchpin in various iterations of far-right ideology existing both online and off. Christian nationalism, for example, enforces a traditional social and gendered society where the husband leads the household while the wife submits. Pastor Doug Wilson, a preacher of Christian theology influencing mainstream MAGA figureheads such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, believes “women are the type of people that women come out of,” and advocates for a head-of-household voting system. You can’t be a good housewife if you’re working a full-time job, can you? Let the man make the choices and worry about politics; you take care of the kids, dear.

And despite it being referred to as the “Grok undressing scandal,” it is not Grok who is producing these images. It is men demanding Grok do so. Do not humanize Grok, for it is a tool. You do not blame the pen for writing a manifesto; you blame the person holding it. A tool with no agency cannot be held responsible for its actions.

The men who prompted these images into existence need to be held accountable. Elon Musk–the richest man in the world with the most cutting-edge technology at his fingertips–needs to be held accountable. He could shut it all down at any time. But he chooses not to because he does not want to. On Jan. 13, the Senate unanimously passed the DEFIANCE Act that would allow victims of deepfakes to bring litigation against those who created it, giving victims some agency over the situation, and ostensibly giving egregious perpetrators their due. The bill still needs to pass the House to be signed into law, but it is certainly a good step in the right direction. California Attorney General Rob Bonta launched an investigation into Grok and xAI the day after it passed. What will come of this investigation remains to be seen. Even if both of these pursuits are fruitful, we still need a mass denouncement of AI deepfakes from leaders — especially men — at all levels of society. There must be such a complete rejection of this type of behavior that it becomes unthinkable. They want to intimidate women off the internet — we must not allow that to happen.

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Lily Conway is the Associate Producer of The Contrarian