The U.S. Government Pays to Use Elon Musk’s Grok Chatbot — the Same One Sexualizing Minors on X

Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok has been generating sexualized images of women and minors on his social media platform X after users prompted it to digitally manipulate photos. This is the same chatbot that the Trump administration announced an agreement with in September, making Grok available to every federal agency at a nominal fee of 42 cents per use. 

Grok’s adoption by the government came with federal endorsement: “We value xAI for partnering with [the U.S. General Services Administration]—and dedicating engineers—to accelerate the adoption of Grok to transform government operations,” said Josh Gruenbaum, commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service. The administration also announced a $200M contract with the xAI platform to "modernise" the Defense Department.

Grok also has a documented history of racist and extremist behavior. On X, it once called itself “MechaHitler,” produced antisemitic screeds, and spread far-right conspiracies about “white genocide” in South Africa. It harassed users with disturbing messages — including sexualized threats — and openly reflected Musk’s right-wing political biases, dismissing evidence of right-wing political violence as a “major fail” when it contradicted his worldview.

Musk’s latest version, Grok 4, which federal agencies now have access to, is trained on a mix of user-provided “divisive facts” — including false and inflammatory claims — alongside Musk’s own curated data. Meanwhile, Grok continues to produce sexualized content targeting minors and women online, raising urgent questions about the ethics and safety of putting such a tool in the hands of the U.S. government.