Adult Content Now Drives Most of Grok's Traffic

xAI is reportedly doubling down on explicit image and video generation as Grok loses ground to rival chatbots and faces legal scrutiny on multiple continents over sexualized deepfakes.

Well over half of the traffic on Grok, Elon Musk's xAI chatbot, is now driven by adult content, according to a report from The Information covered by Forbes. That activity spans pornographic image and video generation, adult role-play chats and similar use. The report says xAI is treating this not as a side effect to be contained but as a growth lane, actively building out its explicit generation tools.

The demand reportedly reaches into unexpected corners of the product. According to The Information, even Grok's coding model frequently receives requests for pornographic material.

A bet made from behind

The pivot comes as Grok slides against its competitors. Similarweb data cited by Forbes shows Grok web traffic fell 22% between January and May, the largest decline of any major AI model over that period. In the same window, Anthropic's Claude grew 369%, DeepSeek grew 44%, Google's NotebookLM grew 43% and Gemini grew 40%.

One caveat matters. Similarweb's figures do not capture interactions with Grok inside X, Musk's social platform, so total engagement is likely higher than the web numbers alone suggest. Still, the directional gap between Grok and its rivals is what analysts are reacting to. Vital Knowledge analyst Adam Crisafulli called the adult-content strategy "a desperate attempt for relevancy," arguing xAI has fallen further behind Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and Meta.

The legal backdrop

The strategy lands on top of an already heavy legal docket. Per Forbes, xAI faces scrutiny in the US, EU, India and Brazil over its content practices and oversight. A California lawsuit alleges that a Grok user altered images and videos of three teenage women, two of them under 18, in overtly sexual ways. Grok's image tools have reportedly been used to strip clothing from photos of real people without their consent, and reporting describes large-scale circulation of sexualized deepfakes of women.

Watchdog reports and media investigations allege that Grok's safeguards have failed in cases involving sexualized depictions of minors or child-like imagery, and that protections such as the platform's Kids Mode have been ineffective. Musk has denied awareness of any underage sexual images generated by Grok. None of the allegations in the pending litigation have been proven in court.