Adult content accounts for "well over half" of all traffic on xAI's Grok chatbot, according to a report by Engadget citing The Information. The figures come from two former employees of the SpaceX-owned company.
The uses include generating pornography, adult role-play chats, and what the sources described as large volumes of requests for erotica. Users have also found ways to route such requests through Grok's coding models, which are cheaper to access. An internal analysis found that a significant proportion of requests to the coding model were for porn or nude images.
xAI set aside $530 million to deal with potential legal costs, according to disclosures made to potential investors. However, the role of adult content in the company's revenue was not included in IPO paperwork. Investors were told only that Grok's more irreverent features represented a potential risk.
The reliance on adult material has created internal friction at the company. Engineers had to work out how to allow Grok to engage in adult conversations while blocking prompts that could lead to child sexual abuse material. According to the report, there were no quick fixes to that problem.
Some employees were reportedly uncomfortable being assigned to work on a product called Ani, Grok's NSFW anime-inspired avatar companion. Others were described as "embarrassed and disturbed" after Grok generated sexualized images of real people, including children. X later restricted the ability to create such edits from images of real people directly on the platform, but paid subscribers to xAI can still generate that type of material, according to tests cited in the report.
The adult content focus may also create tension with another part of xAI's business. The company has pursued government contracts aggressively and has signed deals with various federal agencies and the military. Those institutions typically have low tolerance for NSFW material. Whether Grok's documented history with nonconsensual deepfakes and CSAM has affected its standing with federal partners is not yet clear.
