As the controversy around these images mounted and governments around the world opened investigations, xAI, Elon Musk’s A.I. company, seemed to stay relatively quiet. Sure, its chatbot excreted images of carnage and abuse all over what passes for the public sphere. And sure, the company’s owner at first seemed to cheer on the chatbot, responding “Perfect 👌” to a Grok-generated image of his own lumpy body in a two-piece bikini. But it took some time before xAI caved and “implemented technological measures to prevent the Grok account from allowing the editing of images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis,” in the words of an official statement from mid-January. (As of Jan. 19, the European nonprofit AI Forensics reported that some of the concerning images were still publicly viewable on the platform, even with these safety measures in place.)