This story was originally reported by Mariel Padilla of The 19th, and republished through Rewire News Group‘s partnership with The 19th News Network.

The social media platform X has been flooded with AI-generated sexualized images of women and children in recent weeks—months before a new law aiming to ban the spread of nonconsensual intimate imagery goes into effect.

Elon Musk, the owner of X, announced a new feature with a post on Christmas Eve encouraging users to try editing images and videos with Grok, the app’s chatbot. Then, a few weeks later, as the new year began, many women noticed something disturbing online: a flood of AI-generated sexualized images of them on the social media platform X. Users on X were able to ask Grok’s latest feature to digitally remove clothing from posted photos and recirculate them.

Grok won’t show people naked, but it follows directions to show women wearing strings and dental floss. Some X users asked Grok to manipulate photos with prompts like “put her into a very transparent mini-bikini,” “remove her school........

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