Elon’s “Nudify” Mess: How X Supercharged Deepfakes

On with Kara Swisher

New York Magazine

Society & Culture

4.2 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2026

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On Christmas Eve, Elon Musk’s X rolled out an in-app tool that lets users alter other people’s photos and post the results directly in reply. With minimal safeguards, it quickly became a pipeline for sexualized, non-consensual deepfakes, including imagery involving minors, delivered straight into victims’ notifications. Renée DiResta, Hany Farid, and Casey Newton join Kara to dig into the scale of the harm, the failure of app stores and regulators to act quickly, and why the “free speech” rhetoric used to defend the abuse is incoherent. Kara explores what accountability could look like — and what comes next as AI tools get more powerful. Renée DiResta is the former technical research manager at Stanford's Internet Observatory. She researched online CSAM for years and is one of the world’s leading experts on online disinformation and propaganda. She’s also the author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality. Hany Farid is a professor of computer sciences and engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He’s been described as the father of digital image forensics and has spent years developing tools to combat CSAM. Casey Newton is the founder of the tech newsletter Platformer and the co-host of The New York Times podcast Hard Fork. This episode was recorded on Tuesday, January 20th. When reached for comment, a spokesperson for X referred us to a ⁠a statement post on X⁠, which reads in part: We remain committed to making X a safe platform for everyone and continue to have zero tolerance for any forms of child sexual exploitation, non-consensual nudity, and unwanted sexual content. We take action to remove high-priority violative content, including Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) and non-consensual nudity, taking appropriate action against accounts that violate our X Rules. We also report accounts seeking Child Sexual Exploitation materials to law enforcement authorities as necessary. Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's on.
0:02.0	Hi, everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:15.7	This is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher.
0:18.3	On Christmas Eve, Elon Musk announced a new AI feature called GROC image edit.
0:24.1	It's an image editing tool built into X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter.
0:29.2	The tool allows users to create AI edited versions of other users' images and then post the
0:34.4	AI version as a reply to the original post on X.
0:38.3	But because X rolled out Grock image edited with almost no safeguards,
0:42.6	strangers flooded X with sexualized deepfakes of real people.
0:46.5	For example, Grock could take a photo of a woman on X
0:49.0	and create a realistic deepfake that looks like the original image,
0:52.6	except the woman is now in a bikini and has, quote,
0:55.7	donut glaze on her face. It could do the same thing with images of children and it did,
1:01.4	creating countless deep fakes. To add insult to injury, because those images were often posted
1:07.8	as replies to the original tweet, the people who were victimized got notifications
1:12.2	every time someone interacted or replied to the sexualized deepfake image. So in essence,
1:18.7	Elon built a tool for creating and distributing sexualized deepfakes, and he did so in the most
1:24.4	humiliating and degrading way possible for the victims. And X has arguably
1:29.6	become the tool for creating and distributing AI-generated child sexual abuse material, or CSAM,
1:35.7	what used to be known as child porn, and frankly, still is. No surprise, governments across the globe
1:42.7	have begun investigations into GROC, and after publicly
1:46.1	mocking the controversy and accusing his critics of censorship, XAI has started putting guardrails
	...

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