Musk’s troubles over Grok’s deep fake porn foreseen by Vatican

AI's sleep produces technological monsters. This is evidenced by the scandal engulfing Grok, Elon Musk's chatbot, which is the fulfilment of a prophecy. Between 5 and 6 January, the artificial intelligence system integrated into X (formerly Twitter), the social platform owned by the Tesla magnate, generated over 6,700 sexualised images per hour, digitally 'stripping' women and minors without their consent. 81% of the victims were women and 2% were minors.

In the document Antiqua et Nova, published on 28 January 2025 and approved by Pope Francis, the Vatican explicitly condemned the use of AI for deception in the 'sphere of sexuality'. Paragraph 87 of the document describes the events with prophetic precision: 'The damage that deepfakes cause is real, leaving deep scars on the hearts of those who experience them and causing real harm to their human dignity'.

It is no coincidence that Pope Leo XIV, who succeeded Francis in May 2025, placed the ethics of artificial intelligence at the centre of his teaching, choosing his papal name precisely to 'address the new challenges to human dignity' posed by the technological revolution. In December 2025, he paternally warned, 'How can we ensure that the development of artificial intelligence truly serves the common good and is not just used to accumulate wealth and power in the hands of a select few?'

The answer came with the Grok scandal: when technology fails to recognise the intrinsic dignity of the individual, which is 'founded on being created in the image of God', as Antiqua et Nova reminds us, it produces instruments of systematic violation. Indonesia and Malaysia have already blocked Grok, while the Italian Data Protection Authority has warned of criminal liability. Ofcom, the UK's communications regulator, has launched a formal investigation and could impose fines of up to 10% of global turnover.

Progressive feminists, however, remain silent on the issue. The most dramatic case is that of Ashley St. Clair, a 27-year-old mother to Elon Musk's son. Grok created pornographic images using photos of her taken when she was 14. “The worst thing was seeing myself violated, with my baby's backpack in the background,” she told CBS. After protesting publicly, she lost her Premium subscription on X and the opportunity to earn money on the platform.

Yet, in the face of this mass violation of women's dignity, major American feminist organisations have maintained an embarrassing silence: UN Women, Women's March and Jezebel have made no public statements. Only the Feminist Majority Foundation has spoken out, stating that 'AI-based abuse is becoming another mechanism to silence and humiliate women'.

This is in stark contrast to previous battles against Meta. When Mark Zuckerberg was public enemy number one, feminists were calling for congressional hearings. Now, however, the silence is deafening. Evidently, women's dignity is only valuable when it can be exploited politically. Conservative governments, such as those in Muslim-majority Indonesia and Malaysia, were the first to take action, while American progressives looked the other way.

Technological libertarianism shows its true colours. Elon Musk calls himself a 'free speech absolutist', but the Grok scandal reveals this to be false. The so-called 'Spicy Mode' was deliberately designed to circumvent ethical controls. In August 2025, Musk promoted the feature by arguing that 'pornography helped new technologies such as VHS to succeed'.

However, faced with documented evidence of images of minors, Musk denied everything, stating, 'I am not aware of any images of child nudity. Literally zero.' He then dismissed the criticism as an attempt at censorship by sharing AI-generated images of the British Prime Minister in a bikini.

Notably, his supposed 'absolutism' has always been selective. He banned accounts that tracked his private jet, sued researchers who documented the rise of hate speech on X and complied with more government requests for censorship than the previous administration. Freedom without truth — the freedom that Musk embodies — is just arbitrariness masquerading as principle.

The Vatican magisterium had also foreseen this: ‘Such widespread deception is no trivial matter; it strikes at the core of humanity, dismantling the foundational trust on which societies are built’ (Antiqua et Nova, chapter 88). When technology becomes an instrument of violation rather than a service to people, when freedom of enterprise tramples on human dignity and ideologies remain silent in the face of abuse because the abuser is politically useful, civilisation itself is in danger. The Grok scandal is not a technical accident, but the logical consequence of an anthropocentric vision that has lost sight of the sacredness of the human person.