News Blogs & News Grok isn't a glitch. And it didn’t come out of nowhere... An AI tool built into Elon Musk’s X, called Grok, is being used to sexualise women and children. And it’s being treated as a tech controversy rather than the safeguarding crisis it is. Ordinary photos are being manipulated, clothes digitally removed, bodies altered and sexualised, then shared without consent. It’s invasive, humiliating, and for many women deeply unsafe. What’s striking, though, is how predictable this all feels. This isn’t a sudden failure of one rogue AI system. On Grok's launch, xAI positioned it as a more ‘unfiltered’, 'rebellious,' and boundary-pushing AI, explicitly designed to answer ‘spicy’ questions that other models would reject. It’s the logical outcome of years of warnings being ignored. Warnings from women’s organisations who have been saying, clearly and consistently, that new technologies would be used to reproduce old harms unless governments and platforms acted decisively. The Women and Equalities Committee has said it will stop using X. That may send a message, but it does nothing to prevent harm - and it falls well short of the decisive action the situation demands. Women’s organisations have been warning about this for years Groups like End Violence Against Women Coalition (EVAW) and Glitch campaigned hard just to get violence against women and girls recognised in the Online Safety Act at all. Their advocacy helped secure guidance requiring platforms to consider gender-based harms, which was a significant and hard-won step forward. But both organisations have been clear from the start that recognition alone is not enough. In their submissions and campaigning work, EVAW and Glitch repeatedly warned that without clear duties, strong enforcement, and accountability for platform design, women would continue to bear the cost of online “innovation” - AKA money-making. Image-based abuse, deepfakes and sexualised harassment were never fringe issues or unforeseen side effects. They were entirely predictable outcomes of systems designed without women’s safety at their core. Grok doesn’t represent a new category of harm. It simply exposes, in real time, the gaps women’s organisations have been flagging for years. A global feminist lens makes this even clearer Womankind Worldwide makes a similar point from a global feminist perspective. Their work on technology-facilitated gender-based violence places online abuse firmly on the same continuum as offline violence against women and girls. In other words, this is not just a content moderation problem or a debate about free speech. It’s a gendered safety issue rooted in inequality and power. Womankind’s research shows how sexualised online abuse silences women, limits participation in public life, and leads to withdrawal, self-censorship and fear. Seen through that lens, AI-generated sexualised images aren’t a novelty or a moral panic. They’re another mechanism through which women are policed, humiliated and pushed out of public spaces. Why this matters specifically for the women’s sector For women’s organisations, the Grok story sits squarely at the intersection of: violence against women and girls digital exclusion and silencing safeguarding and consent and the accountability of powerful institutions Many of the women most affected by image-based abuse are the same women our organisations exist to support: survivors, activists, women in public life, and marginalised women whose voices are already under pressure. AI tools like Grok dramatically accelerate the scale and speed of harm. What once required time, effort or technical skill can now be done in seconds. If regulation continues to lag behind technology, women and girls will once again be expected to absorb the consequences while tech companies experiment first and not even apologise later. A call to action The women’s sector has already done the groundwork. Women's organisations have articulated the problem clearly and proposed solutions grounded in lived experience. What’s needed now is collective pressure. That means: Pushing for active, strict and immediate enforcement of the Online Safety Act that treats gender-based abuse as a core safety issue, not a side concern Demanding safety-by-design, so platforms are accountable for features that enable abuse Backing women’s organisations doing this work with funding, amplification and political support Refusing the framing that this is just about “bad users”, rather than predictable harms built into systems Taking on big tech with bold action, serious penalties, and no loopholes. If AI is going to shape our digital future, then women’s safety, dignity and participation cannot be treated as optional extras. The question isn’t whether the technology can do this. It’s whether we’re willing to insist that it shouldn’t. Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash Manage Cookie Preferences