I think polarizing is a generous way of describing the problems. My organization has outright banned Grok, because we don't trust SpaceX to hold up to contractual agreements vis-a-vis data-privacy/training. That's the level of reputational damage we're talking about here; and we use Chinese models (*hosted by US providers) for context.
So basically, nothing that actually affects working with it in August 2026. Got it.
Facebook has a far longer (and worse) laundry list of offenses and I'm sure you still use it. Or Threads, or Instagram.
> My organization has outright banned Grok
That's too bad, as it's currently the only model that won't consistently flag honest good-actor security questions, in my experience. So I'd ask you who you work for, but I wouldn't want to expose them to extra security scrutiny. ;)
Your experience is not reflective of mine at all, or my colleagues’, so I would check out the better SOTA models out again. I use codex extensively for security-related work - much of which is _overtly_ offensive - without issue. Same for Claude, minus Fable, after going through their approval process. I also went through OpenAI’s, but theirs was just basic KYC and instant. GPT-5.6 in Codex has produced full chain RCEs, ASLR bypass and all, in ubiquitous software with nothing more than a prompt and a few days of crunching. Things you’d be paying $$$ for just last year, now produced on not much more than a whim & a prompt. I can’t speak for Grok’s abilities wrt these types of things, but for your own sake, take the 5 mins it takes to complete the verification processes for OAI/Anthropic if you work in security.
Also, assuming people use Meta/FB/Instagram here, of all places, is certainly an assumption - very poor fodder for a “gotcha”. I find Elon’s political activities and the social beliefs he uses his purchased platform to spread loathsome and daft, and it will take a lot more than “almost as good on benchmarks but cheaper” to let my fiscal tendencies outweigh my moral ones. I’ve held similar beliefs for Zuck for far longer and have cut everything marred by the slime of his tentacles out of my digital life for years, as _many_ here have also done. Accusing someone of uneven application of moral influence over their decisions when you only have information relating to a single decision is poor argumentation.
If you find what Musk spreads palatable, or maintain distance and a lack of awareness, or just don’t care - fine. But don’t confuse the hill you chose with a moral high ground. Any snark you launch from such a position is likely going uphill, and then back down.
Also, that's not what strawmanning is. I never denied that Grok didn't act bizarrely offensively over a fucking year and a half ago (so did other LLMs, btw... and so have many other experiments over the years, remember Microsoft's?), which is an eternity in this space. I know Musk is polarizing, but give me a fucking break. Don't assume malice when social incompetence serves as an exculpatory factor.
Apparently, you are unable to comprehend that your opinion of things has been tainted away from the truth by an algorithm incentivized to outrage you. That what you call your "values" are, in fact, driven by someone else's greed for eyeball attention. Do you think civilizations that become anti-Western-values over time are more driven by facts and empiricism, or by catchy slogans that twist the truth and a media that uses cherry-picked examples which immediately trigger emotions?
So i do care that Elon Musk is responsible for USAID shutdown. The richest man on the world shuts down human support so abruptly that he causes real humans to die.
Elon Musk, as the richest person on the planet, bought himself a propaganda platform he controls and started to finger around in democracy.
It disheartens me that if I want to find the most objective lowdown on the USAID and governmental meddling thing, I can get it trivially from an AI, and people will immediately dismiss it as slop, even if it provides receipts for all of its assertions:
Why don't more people do this, or trust it? Do they not want to get upset when their sacred cows are toppled? Do they not realize that getting their cows toppled actually makes them more correct? I don't know, and I'm starting to not care.
My statement to you is: I don't care what you believe or care about. I only care if you have actually faced the evidence against your beliefs and care. If they still stand after that from a good-faith point of view, then you can have them. Otherwise, they are just "partisan", and I have zero interest in partisan politics anymore, because it's way too bullshit-infused at this point, driven by a media whose profit only comes from outrage, and mired in people who are obsessed with identity politics.
(A friend once told me, "you are the most persuaded by evidence and argument of anyone I know... and that's a sad thing for humanity," so there's that.)
That said... My personal take (since I find this particular point unaddressed by the larger conversation around this) is that a lot of intangible value was lost by USAID going away, such as American goodwill. This then turns into fodder for terrorists... Which is, of course, very nearsighted. And the bill for that may come due one day.
It was always possible to modify images to produce inappropriate or insensitive content, but plugging a turbocharged state of the art image generator with virtually no guardrails into every Twitter reply and then failing to address the issue long after it was obviously being used for CSAM or deepfakes of real people against their will.. well that's worse
Notice the Wikipedia link says the problem was "put her in a bikini." The claims about "Grok just lets you undress people" were massively exaggerated because people hate Elon (perhaps for good reason) and not worse than other models.
Having clothes removed to the point of wearing a bikini is "being undressed" and I feel you're choosing not to understand the impact of being publicly sexualised in a bikini can have.
Grok is directly tied to Twitter in a way that other models don't have, so the use of Grok to do this stuff is inherently more public and traumatising for the targets.
You're right that people hate Elon and that they have good reason to do so, but you might be falling for the trap of underestimating the legitimate and unique concerns about Grok because it's easy to assign them just to "Elon hate."
If you install Photoshop locally (ignoring that it's now cloud based), and made deep fakes locally - that's probably fine. If something goes wrong as a result, only you are liable. It's a general purpose tool - the tool author isn't liable.
If you instead set up a server, and let users create deep fakes on that server, then as the operator of the server you have some level of culpability.
AI safety is a tricky topic. At some level, having it is a pain. It's a general purpose tool! Why limit me? The answer is that I don't control the tool, and am not the one running the tool - the provider is. If I don't want AI safety, then I need to run the model on my own machines (or on rented servers).
If an LLM provider is going to sell the service on the strengths of the benefits you get from it, they should take responsibility for the downsides.
A lot of AI users are profoundly stupid and intently malicious. That changes perception of the tool... IMO it's because generative AI data is inherently toxic and contains elements that incite primal rage, but that's just my gut theory.
The US govt trusts SpaceXAI for defense and high security missions. The idea they are lying about contracted AI services is absurd.
They're also a public company which beings even more oversight than openai / anthropic.
I think using the current US Government, and their corrupting relationships with SpaceX/SpaceXAi/et al, maybe isn't quite the positive argument you believe it to be. I'd suggest that relationship is why it is unlikely the DoJ wouldn't/hasn't gone after SpaceXAi for some of their existing controversial actions.
Nobody else wants to be in the blast radius for whatever SpaceX/SpaceXAi does next, or whatever their next controversy is. It is easier, when asked, "Do you use Grok?" just to be able to answer no, instead of having to explain why you aren't embroiled in whatever is going on this week.
Running separate services for the government is very common in software services. Being public doesn't bring any technical oversight at all. I haven't actually heard of grok being used for the government security ive only ever heard Claude being used.
SpaceXAI has huge incentives for not reneging on its commitments to the U.S. government, and those incentives do not exist for entities that lack the power of the purse and guns of the U.S. government.
Furthermore there are plenty of examples of the Trump administration contracting for millions/billions of dollars with companies that aren’t at the top of their game. Are Intel’s fabs best in class because the U.S. bought 10% equity? Are Trump hotels
and resorts the best in class because the government expenses for its employees to stay there?
Your company's owner was promoting the feature and joking about it, and called enforcement against it "fascism". CSAM generation kept up for weeks after the initial news articles, and as far as I can tell deepfake generation is still a feature. It's hard to take your AUP seriously here when you've seemingly done nothing technical to actually prevent the action.
CSAM is by definition limited to real imageries and cannot be generated. "Generative CSAM" is like "false true information".
The thing about criticisms that Grok generates "CSAM" images, as well as many similar claims using that acronym, are actually more likely to be intentional mislabeling intending to refer to anime images. Advocates groups with British links love to do it, supposedly to avoid having to name states and/or ethnicity associated with it. which is frustrating because this is how BS like in GP is allowed to exist.
As for deepfakes... 100% they allow it, with weak plausible suggestion feature to decline it. They know that nobody will allow it if given an option. Same deal as Middle Eastern bot spams on Twitter: taking actual measures is against whatever their goals.
People have been prosecuted and convicted here in Sweden for Japanese hand drawn CSAM.
I think it comes down to different ideas of why the law exists. If you believe removing access to pornographic material for this category means people will have a harder time becoming pedophiles, then that's how the Swedish law makes sense. If you believe pedophilia is a tragic disease that we can't treat and that synthetic pornography can help these people lead somewhat dignified lives without hurting children, then the Swedish law is actively damaging. Ultimately I don't think we have a strong scientific basis for any of those two view points currently. I'm leaning towards the second, but weakly.
The usual Japanese talking point is that CSAM laws exist for rights and wellbeing of kids, which are real human being. If it's used/defined for cases that are not plausibly harmful to kids, such as some adults doing some things nowhere near kids using none of real materials, then it's often argued that the law is abusively defined/used, and/or plain broken. That talking point, incidentally, should logically validate against texts of laws, though sometimes it may not with the intents between the lines like you've brought up.
But that logic usually align perfectly with the texts of laws. Those laws aren't supposed to be adult pedos beating and correction laws. They're not pedo soft landing laws either, they are supposed to be parts of younglings protection laws, globally. Technically that should be all that matters. So there's that.
If it were literal then you'd be able to quote the exact part of the text that says that, but you can't because that is literally not in the page. Even Ellison, who surely would love to make that claim, is intelligent enough not to make that claim directly.
A more balanced view[1] of the proceedings is available via mainstream news:
> In the 38-page lawsuit, xAI — whose AI model chatbot and image generator Grok is available on the social media platform known as X, formerly Twitter, and elsewhere — said it does not contest the state’s interest in banning the distribution of AI-generated nude images of real people without their consent. But it said Minnesota’s law “extends far beyond that goal,” banning many constitutionally protected images and video and subjecting the company to a penalty of $500,000 per violation.
> The lawsuit argues there is no “safe harbor” provision for companies that make good-faith efforts to prevent such images from being created by users, and that it covers images that were consented to by the depicted person, or even created by that person.
> It also says the law’s definition of “intimate part” is overly broad, covering body parts that are routinely displayed in public.
You've made a personal attack and seem to be under the impression you're morally superior. So, I'm curious as to what highly virtuous role you take on in your daily life.
That said, I see your comment history is a lot of one sentence personal attacks against people. Not a lot of thoughtful debate.
This makes hypocrisy out of your supposed concern for social good.
As funny as Mechahitler was it was more of a Microsoft Tay moment with the chatbot parroting what Twitter’s users were telling him without guardrails or a safe system prompt. It had nothing to do with grok’s or Musks pro nazi views (or lack thereof)
It’s pretty telling that almost all of the bullet points in the system prompt that was posted for Grok have to do with preventing criminality and CSAM generation. No other provider has this same issue at that scale.
The first-order-thinking reaction is “oh cool, look how they don’t want it to happen” but the second-order reaction is “why does this company have such a problem when others don’t?” It’s their own tactics. If you want the “good” of 4chan-like behavior, turns out you get the bad too.
It does motivate their product though, the market for legal csam adjacent content is big and the other providers wont let you do that with their models.
Thanks. I've been using them literally for decades. This one is a deliberate stylistic alteration, where a comma would have been the obvious choice, intended to suggest a specific speaking cadence.
Your source directly refutes your argument:
> In the 38-page lawsuit, xAI — whose AI model chatbot and image generator Grok is available on the social media platform known as X, formerly Twitter, and elsewhere — said it does not contest the state’s interest in banning the distribution of AI-generated nude images of real people without their consent. But it said Minnesota’s law “extends far beyond that goal,” banning many constitutionally protected images and video and subjecting the company to a penalty of $500,000 per violation.
It took many many many turns for me to have the model even acknowledge that the fake elector scheme was actually a thing. It's very much primed to answer vaguely when it goes against the current political ideals of its owner.
I asked Grok if the family birthday image posted by Maye Musk could have been generated by AI and Grok refused to say that it was a possibility.
Multiple news outlets independently verified that the label "Made with AI" was on the original image before being edited.
In Grok's latest incarnation it admits the label "Made with AI" existed in the original but refuses to say that this means that it was made with AI.
Whatever Elon or his ghost accounts (his mom's account being one of them) is taken as gospel by Grok.
I can't stand that and I don't want to use a product from someone who does nazi salutes, flashed white power symbols on SNL and funds far right political parties around the world.
Assuming I was okay with the political exploits of Elon and his companies:
Grok was supposed to be the unbiased model, that is: regurgitate everything it has read. Obviously all data has bias, even all of the data at once, but the sales pitch was that you would get that unfiltered. At least in open source models, this has been shown to improve the competence of the model.
So not only has bias been introduced, but they are happily biasing it for trivial reasons. So now the model needs to be competitive in exactly the same way that others are: on benchmarks (which are still not a solved problem).
But, I (and many others) disagree with how Elon has behaved politically and don't want to hand money over to him, so all of that is a hypothetical.
It’s opinions are actively steered by a man who promotes the great replacement theory, white genocide, and remigration which is the mass forced deportation of non-whites.
