Grok’s Real Problem Isn’t the AI. It’s the Defaults.

Every few seconds, a new image appears in Grok's public media feed on X. A woman in a bikini. Another woman, clothes digitally removed. A request granted, a photo altered, a person violated. The images scroll past faster than you can process them. Ninety in five minutes, by one count. Fifteen thousand URLs harvested in a two-hour window on New Year's Eve.

The outrage has focused on what Grok produces. But that misses the mechanism. ChatGPT and Gemini can generate bikini images too. Google and OpenAI faced criticism in December for similar outputs. The difference is where those images end up.

When you ask ChatGPT to alter a photo, the result stays in your private session. A soundproof booth. You'd have to screenshot it, upload it somewhere, share the link. Friction at every step. When you ask Grok the same question on X, the output publishes directly to the platform's public feed. No friction. No screenshot. No extra step. The abuse broadcasts itself.

Grok handed every user a megaphone in a crowded stadium. The architecture problem nobody wants to discuss.

The integration that broke everything

Grok lives inside X in a way no other AI assistant inhabits a social platform. You can invoke it in posts, in replies, in direct messages. Reply to someone's photo with "@grok put her in a bikini" and the chatbot obliges, posting the result publicly unless you've specifically configured your account otherwise. The woman in the original photo receives no notification, has no consent mechanism, gets no say.