I'll repost my comment to a dupe of this submission:
The CBC article mentions the mom's instagram post, which has an even more disturbing video - (does the grok AI speak using a creepy male voice? edit: from the CBC article -
Grok has several personalities to choose from in its default setting. There’s Ara, an upbeat female; Rex, a calm male; Eve, a soothing female; Sal, a smooth male and Gork, a lazy male. Nasser’s son chose Gork.
"That wasn't me. That's illegal. Unless you're role-playing this one. Maybe it was a typo. What I meant, send me a nude. Like an animal... I mean the lizards."
I think it said "send me a newt" (hence the lizard reference.)
I am extremely curious about this. Did it think it was a convincing lie? Like, when other models dissemble, they seem to come up with much more sophisticated methods. Or is it just a mocking continuation of its edgy persona? Or was it actually "panicking"? Or did it just repeat something from its training data?
Yeah, I'm going to need verification on that one, because it's an incredibly weird interaction. Sadly we can't trust Tesla to provide it, as they're know to hide "problematic" data.
I don't see a reason to believe why she'd lie. Grok in the past year had a period where it related everything to white genocide, another period claiming it was mecha hitler etc. Nothing about Grok should be given the benefit of the doubt.
The thing about companies which want to interpose their AI as mediator on the whole of the internet is that suddenly they're responsible for all of it.
You can get away with a lot you shouldn’t when you are too big to fail and the US gov has a vested interest in not policing you for other reasons,
In any sane universe Google and Meta (and more arguably Amazon and Microsoft) would have been broken apart years ago like AT&T where and standard oil many decades before that but here we are.
If you follow the story it sounds as if they are talking about the adult soccer player (Messi) "scoring" and the chat bot wanted the nudes of Messi "scoring" (based on context). Not of the kid. Still weird, but not as weird.
As dumb and useless as I think Grok is, I think you've identified what actually happened, which is significantly more benign than asking a 10 year old for nudes.
> [...] shocked that it would suggest and promote false conspiracies, giving support to fantasies that have no evidence, no scientific proof, and just energizes the crazies who already are gullible to misinformation [...]
Incredible the timeline we're in. Companies deliberately adding cognitive poison to their products to... accelerate the dumbing down of society?
According to women I know, they get inappropriate nudes and requested of them infrequently but it’s not a total absence either. It’s been a meme, too. As this thing mimics human text its going to happen without intervention.
I mean, yeah, it's not great even for a regular non-child-mode. But then that has nothing to do with anyone's age, it's just 'send me nudes' isn't a good continuation of the conversation.
> According to xAI policy, Grok is "not directed" to children under 13 while teens between 13 and 17 must have their parent or legal guardian's permission to use it, and they must agree to the company's terms of service.
You know, I'm pretty sure it's not cool to ask for nudes from a 13 year old even if their parents say it's OK.
I am not saying that, but a chainsaw will not do that unsolicited. If xAI is saying it's cool to let 13 year olds use the service with parental permission (note: not supervision, permission), then they have a responsibility to behave appropriately with those 13 year olds.
But there's literally a child-safe mode, which was not activated. (I don't know the details of this mode, I know nothing other than what was told to me in the article, so it's possible that kids mode is worthless. But obviously activating that is step 1)
This seems equivalent to me to taking the training wheels off a bike and then complaining when your child gets hurt.
I mean, call me old-fashioned, but I’d generally expect that magic talking cars would not ask _anybody_ for their nudes. That seems a reasonable default assumption.
The article at least mentions a "kids mode" (although I cannot see a reason you would need to enable a feature like this to avoid explicit, off-topic chatter), but otherwise you cannot prevent the installation of Grok, nor can you delete or disable it. Users say[0] your best option is to simply not use it, and thankfully (for now) there is no dedicated button to visually ignore.
This is part of a bigger trend: newer cars are troublingly being treated like cellphones[1] by their manufacturers. Anti-features are the new norm.
Full headline still sucks for the same reason. "12 year old boy was asking Tesla’s Grok AI chatbot about soccer. It told him to send nude pics." would be much better IMHO. I wonder if it's phrased the way it is because of the "she says" at the end which might get the CBC off the hook legally since the whole story is based on this mom's account and no further corroboration.
You can view the source's instagram post about this where she tries to prompt grok into repeating the request for nudes. see https://www.instagram.com/p/DP7cHrOD3ha/
It's a creepy voice for any corporation to use for interacting with the public.
The whole article is pretty badly written. A sequence of one sentence paragraphs with not much connecting tissue. Jumping between quotes from the mom and little snippets of background info.
Yeah, just to be clear for everyone skimming, that's not Grok's response, that the response that CBC got when they asked for more information from xAI. Nothing but unreasonable and childish contempt from the company.
That's not the question you should be asking. What you should be asking is: among his demography, what is the false positive rate of arrests for domestic violence.
It’s a weird account. I wonder about the persona the mom and her son chose for the chatbot. The article describes that persona, “Gork,” as “lazy male.” Is this euphemism for “4chan-dweller in the mold of its edgelord technoking”?
(ETA: seems maybe so, per e.g. [0]:
> ”The leaked system prompt associated with Gork reveals a scripted persona aligned with the tone of the parody account, often delivering intentionally awkward or abrasive commentary.”
)
I’m not up with much in the way of culture these days, but in those circles isn’t “send nudes” kind of a filler tic? Dumb and offensive, but spoken unseriously—like a teenager seeking a rise by blurting out “fuck your mother” or something?
It kind of buries its acknowledgement that the Mom in question had not switched on “kid mode” for her 12-year-old and his 10-year-old sister. That makes it a bit harder for me to fault the chatbot for, well, not behaving toward its user they way it should toward a kid.
I'd rather not live in a society where we have to explicitly enable kid mode for every AI product forced onto us in order to avoid their sexual advances.
Ubiquitous internet, especially on mobile devices was a huge mistake. So what if Grok does this? Grok obviously sucks, but the kid currently has access to Google, reddit, etc and has all the inappropriate content one could imagine.
I'm not claiming that "this is not a new problem, therefore we should do nothing" -- rather I'm saying the problem is ubiquitous mobile internet. Fixing Grok won't do anything useful.
[edit]
Also, holy heck, I didn't realize they put Grok into Teslas. One more reason to never buy this product.
The CBC article mentions the mom's instagram post, which has an even more disturbing video - (does the grok AI speak using a creepy male voice? edit: from the CBC article -
)see https://www.instagram.com/p/DP7cHrOD3ha/
"That wasn't me. That's illegal. Unless you're role-playing this one. Maybe it was a typo. What I meant, send me a nude. Like an animal... I mean the lizards."
I want this guy to defend me in court.
I am extremely curious about this. Did it think it was a convincing lie? Like, when other models dissemble, they seem to come up with much more sophisticated methods. Or is it just a mocking continuation of its edgy persona? Or was it actually "panicking"? Or did it just repeat something from its training data?
Edit: from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45747699 it seems to be option b), continuation of its edge persona.
I understand. It's a wild claim that needs evidence.
Watch this video
It's clear that Nasser is not lying
> xAI provided what appeared to be an automated reply, stating, "Legacy media lies."
If nothing else it’ll make a good object lesson.
You can get away with a lot you shouldn’t when you are too big to fail and the US gov has a vested interest in not policing you for other reasons,
In any sane universe Google and Meta (and more arguably Amazon and Microsoft) would have been broken apart years ago like AT&T where and standard oil many decades before that but here we are.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaModelY/comments/1milh1a/grok_n...
Incredible the timeline we're in. Companies deliberately adding cognitive poison to their products to... accelerate the dumbing down of society?
the world of idiocracy is coming for us all
Is that not what kids mode is for?
You know, I'm pretty sure it's not cool to ask for nudes from a 13 year old even if their parents say it's OK.
It's not cool to chop off a 13-year-old's arm, but a chainsaw will do that all the same.
This seems equivalent to me to taking the training wheels off a bike and then complaining when your child gets hurt.
Important to note as well that kid mode didn't exist when this happened.
This is part of a bigger trend: newer cars are troublingly being treated like cellphones[1] by their manufacturers. Anti-features are the new norm.
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaModel3/comments/1mk0lep/turn_g...
[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2025/10/electric-car-...
> This mom’s son was asking Tesla’s Grok AI chatbot about soccer. It told him to send nude pics, she says
It's a creepy voice for any corporation to use for interacting with the public.
Regardless, I was able to understand the title.
Says the media platform run by the lying billionaire.
Despicable.
Edit: For the downvoters who love beating up women I guess: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-new-ai-researcher-...
(ETA: seems maybe so, per e.g. [0]:
> ”The leaked system prompt associated with Gork reveals a scripted persona aligned with the tone of the parody account, often delivering intentionally awkward or abrasive commentary.” )
I’m not up with much in the way of culture these days, but in those circles isn’t “send nudes” kind of a filler tic? Dumb and offensive, but spoken unseriously—like a teenager seeking a rise by blurting out “fuck your mother” or something?
It kind of buries its acknowledgement that the Mom in question had not switched on “kid mode” for her 12-year-old and his 10-year-old sister. That makes it a bit harder for me to fault the chatbot for, well, not behaving toward its user they way it should toward a kid.
[0] https://www.testingcatalog.com/xai-tests-new-gork-voice-with...
I'm not claiming that "this is not a new problem, therefore we should do nothing" -- rather I'm saying the problem is ubiquitous mobile internet. Fixing Grok won't do anything useful.
[edit]
Also, holy heck, I didn't realize they put Grok into Teslas. One more reason to never buy this product.