BIG NUMBER
22%. That’s the drop in Grok web traffic between January and May, according to Similarweb, more than any other major chatbot. Similarweb’s data doesn’t include interactions with Grok through X, Musk’s social media site.
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CHIEF CRITICS
xAI has already faced legal scrutiny in the EU, India, Brazil and the U.S. over its practices and oversight, including one suit in California alleging that images and videos of three teenage women, two under the age of 18, were altered by a Grok user in overtly sexual ways. Grok’s image tools have been used to “undress” photos of real people—often without their consent—and reports describe large-scale circulation of sexualized deepfakes of women. Multiple watchdog reports and media investigations allege that Grok’s safeguards have failed in cases involving sexualized depictions of minors or “child-like” imagery, and protections (like “Kids Mode”) have been criticized as ineffective.
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CONTRA
Musk has said he is “not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok.”
Key background
xAI, which was merged with Musk’s SpaceX in February to become the world’s most valuable private company before going public earlier this month, launched Grok as a direct competitor to ChatGPT, Claude and Google’s Gemini. Musk positioned it as a less restrictive alternative to those platforms, but the company has struggled to close the gap with Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and Meta—all of which have continued to release more powerful frontier models. While traffic to Grok has slowed significantly this year, Claude’s traffic has grown an explosive 369% in the same period and Deepseek (44%), Google’s NotebookLM (43%) and Gemini (40%) have also grown, according to Similarweb.
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