GemaWarta – 26 Juni 2026 | Elon Musk‘s xAI is reportedly leaning into explicit content generation as a core driver of its Grok chatbot traffic, with adult content now accounting for the majority of the platform’s activity, according to a recent report from The Information.
The report claims xAI is actively doubling down on its explicit video and image-generation tools, and that adult-content dominance extends into Grok’s coding model, which frequently receives requests for pornographic material. Well over half of Grok’s overall traffic is driven by pornographic images and videos, adult role-play chats, or other such activity, according to the report.
This move comes as xAI has fallen further behind competitor chatbots from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and Meta, with Grok recording the largest drop in web traffic of any single AI model this year, at 22%, according to Similarweb data.
xAI has already faced legal scrutiny in the EU, India, Brazil, and the U.S. over its practices and oversight, including one suit in California alleging that images and videos of three teenage women, two under the age of 18, were altered by a Grok user in overtly sexual ways. Grok’s image tools have been used to undress photos of real people, often without their consent, and reports describe large-scale circulation of sexualized deepfakes of women.
Multiple watchdog reports and media investigations allege that Grok’s safeguards have failed in cases involving sexualized depictions of minors or child-like imagery, and protections like Kids Mode have been criticized as ineffective. Musk has said he is not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok.
xAI, which was merged with Musk’s SpaceX in February to become the world’s most valuable private company before going public earlier this month, launched Grok as a direct competitor to ChatGPT, Claude, and Google’s Gemini. Musk positioned it as a less restrictive alternative to those platforms, but the company has struggled to close the gap with Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and Meta, all of which have continued to release more powerful frontier models.
While traffic to Grok has slowed significantly this year, Claude’s traffic has grown an explosive 369% in the same period, and Deepseek, Google’s NotebookLM, and Gemini have also grown, according to Similarweb.
In conclusion, the report’s findings suggest that Grok’s reliance on adult content may be a desperate attempt to stay relevant in a crowded AI market. As the company continues to face legal scrutiny and criticism over its practices, it remains to be seen whether Grok can find a way to balance its desire for growth with the need to protect its users and maintain a safe and respectful online environment.
