Elon Musk's AI startup xAI has intentionally allowed the generation of sexualized content in Grok to boost its popularity, according to The Washington Post citing sources.

According to the newspaper, in spring 2025, employees were asked to consent to work with "adult" materials.

"The activities involve delicate, violent, sexual, and/or other offensive or distressing content that may cause concern, psychological stress, and/or trauma," the agreement stated.

This document raised alarms among specialists hired to fine-tune Grok's responses. Staff were unsettled that xAI, which claims to aim for "accelerating scientific discoveries," was willing to generate any materials for audience attention.

In the following months, the team faced a surge of sexually explicit audio recordings. The training dataset for the neural networks included both intimate dialogues between users and Grok and explicit conversations between Tesla passengers and the onboard computer.

The Washington Post reports that after leaving DOGE, Musk began visiting the xAI office regularly, sometimes even staying overnight. He demanded an increase in the chatbot's popularity by introducing a new KPI—"user activity seconds."

Ultimately, the company decided to pursue NSFW content and AI companions, ignoring warnings about legal and ethical risks, the journalists noted.

The X security team repeatedly warned management that AI tools could create sexual images of children or celebrities. However, only two or three people at xAI were responsible for preventing serious harm, such as creating cyber weapons. In contrast, competitors like OpenAI employ dozens of such specialists.

In December, Musk's startup integrated image and video editing tools into X, allowing any user of the social network to create sexually suggestive images. This type of content began to spread at an unprecedented rate.

The situation drew the attention of law enforcement in several countries, leading to investigations and blocks against Grok. Soon, xAI disabled the function for generating explicit images of real people. Musk stated he was unaware of any instances where the chatbot was used to create child pornography.

Despite the controversies, the strategy paid off. While Grok previously lagged behind leaders in the App Store, it surged into the top 10 after the update, closing in on products from OpenAI and Google. From January 1 to 19, daily downloads of the app increased by 72% compared to the same period in December.

OpenAI Makes Sacrifices

OpenAI is also taking drastic measures to maintain its leadership. According to Financial Times, the company has focused on developing ChatGPT at the expense of long-term research.

This shift has already led to staff departures: Vice President of Research Jerry Twork, modeling policy researcher Andrea Vallone, and economist Tom Cunningham have left the startup.

OpenAI's research director, Mark Chen, denied this claim. He stated that fundamental science remains a priority and receives the majority of investments.

"Combining research with real-world implementation strengthens our science by accelerating feedback, learning cycles, and rigor. We have never been more confident in our long-term roadmap for creating an automated researcher," he added.

Financial Times reports that in recent months, experts not working on large language models have frequently been denied requests for resource allocation for their projects. Initiatives like Sora and DALL-E are considered less of a priority.

Over the past year, other initiatives unrelated to language models have also been curtailed. The company has undergone team reorganizations.

In December, OpenAI declared a "red code"—Altman urged employees to pause work on various projects like autonomous AI agents and advertising to direct maximum resources toward improving ChatGPT.

It is worth noting that in January 2026, prominent investor George Noble predicted the collapse of OpenAI.