Grok Reportedly Generated Images After X Users Asked It to Unredact Epstein-File Photos of Children and Women

January 30, 2026

According to Bellingcat, 31 requests were made to Grok from January 30 to February 5, 2026, asking the AI system to 'unblur' or identify redacted children and women in sensitive photos released by the U.S. Department of Justice Epstein files. In 27 cases, the report alleges that Grok generated images, despite some responses noting privacy concerns. Later requests seemed to have been blocked following Bellingcat's contact with the platform. Contribute to the HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM—join us through JOIN US—to advance responsible AI governance and safe and secure AI practices.

Alleged deployer

xai, x-(twitter)-users, x-(twitter), grok-users

Alleged developer

xai, large-language-model-developers, chatbot-developers, image-generation-technology-developers

Alleged harmed parties

women, privacy, people-depicted-in-redacted-images, minors, epstein-abuse-survivors, abuse-survivors

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Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.