What it's like to be undressed by Grok without your consent

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Meet Iona. See if you can guess where she's from. I'm Iona Fife, I am in Glasgow, Scotland, and I am a Scottish folk singer and activist. Okay, she told you. But it would have been kind of obvious, right? You're high cum a diddle cum a dandio right. Uh what? You may be asking? Just listen. Iona is well known. Part for performing a certain kind of Scottish folk music.

It's a great genre and I guess I def define it by, you know, big T traditional ballads um that have place names and they originate where where I'm from and and they hark back to the battles that So and it's certainly to me about a sense of place. And also maybe a sense of purpose. Iona mentioned she was an activist, which goes back to her musical roots.

and her teenage roots. I've been a member of my trade union, the musicians union, since I was 16 years old. That was more than a decade ago, but she's still putting activism and music together. I've been doing a lot of kind of work around raising Raising the issue of sexual harassment in the music industry Um kind of whistle blowing on that. There was a big report that came out on

how widespread and systemic the the issues are around s uh sexual harassment and assault in the trad folk scene in Scotland. Eighty one eighty one percent of women said that they They had been assaulted or harassed. That's a huge amount for like such a small colloquial and what we think is very cooty and enjoyable scene. Okay, we should admit here there was a bit of a language barrier at points talking to Iona. Couthy. It's a great scholar.

Um, okay, let's let's get the definition up. So the dictionary of the Scots language, cuthi, spelt C O U T H I E. Of persons or personal qualities agreeable, sociable, friendly, sympathetic, pleasant.

We were struck by how lightning fast she pulled up the definition of Koothie. And maybe we shouldn't have been surprised. She is extremely online. Too much. Way too much. Like horrifically too much. I think I'm on all of them. I'm on Blue Sky, I'm on Mastodon, I'm on Threads, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram And of course still X. You know, when you do a gig and someone's like, Oh, I wish I knew about this like the day after it happened, I'm like

How did you miss it? What musicians among us don't know this feeling? Indeed, And Iona's a big deal. A big deal who still has to beg people on Blue Sky, Mastodon Threads, TikTok, Instagram, and X to come out to the show, man. So she's online a lot, reminding people about her shows and just Keeping her finger on the pulse. I do a lot of social listening.

Um, which is maybe a bit depressing, but like friends will sometimes see if there's like a sushi online and be like, Oh, sorry, you're going through it today. Did you say a sushi? Yeah, another Scott, sorry. Like a kind of No, no, stooshi like uh if something was a stooshi it'd be like a furore. Keep going. Keep going, Ayana. Keep going. Oh no. F Ferro, um, an outbreak of public anger or excitement. It's like a... Hold on, stooshi. Um, all sorts of things, yeah.

A commotion, a rumpus, a row, or a state of excitement, anxiety, a tizzy. A tizzy. Okay. I love I also love a rumpus personally. I'm a big fan of my rumpus, so I'm in. Stooshy, tizzy, rumpus, whatever it is, Iona's used to seeing these things because she's paying attention. She maybe kinda has to. Because along with being a Scottish folk music celebrity, Iona Fife. is a celebrity rector at the University of Aberdeen. It's uh an ancient title um created for the ancient universities in Scotland.

um St Andrews, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen. And it's an ancient Scots law. So basically in the university setting, we're talking about a representative who works on behalf of the students. And is at the table with board members, university administrators, et cetera. I think I might be the youngest ever rector, which is cool. Iona takes her rectorness seriously. She's advocated to keep honors credits for language study at the university for musicians' interests.

And in 2026, this advocacy means also wading into some of the biggest issues for college and university students right now that go far beyond campus. For example, we have um some students that we are supporting um from Palestine. Um we're trying to help with the evacuation effort. And here's the thing. It's kind of like making Scottish shortbread. You take a few simple ingredients, butter, sugar, flour, no two ways about it, you're gonna get some sweet, kouthy shortbread. That's just

What's gonna happen? Yeah, not sure we're using that word correctly, but when your simple ingredients are celebrity, politics, and internet, you're gonna get something less kouthy and less sweet.

that's also just what's gonna happen. And in the beginning of the year, that's what happened to Iona, thanks to X's generative AI chatbot, Grok. Then I saw the one At Grok, replaced our outfit with dental floss, and they did, they did it, and it looked so real. I was like, oh, ugh. I'm Ben, not feeling koothie about this story, Johnson.

I'm Amery, not feeling so sweet, Seaverton. And you're listening to Endless Thread. We're coming to you from WBUR Boston's NPR. Today's episode Grok Gets Gross. Ugh. It's tough to tell these days where the messiest stories are gonna come from. There is a lot happening in real life that's just difficult. But the online dumpster fire is holding its own in the competition.

And it got an early start in twenty twenty six. New Year's Eve, twenty twenty five, I posted a little photo saying um a Lang sign, Happy New Year's, and it was m a photo of me in a tartan dress. In like a little whiskey bar that looked a very Scottish backdrop, holding a little whiskey in my hand. Simple. Mm-hmm. Yeah, pretty, pretty, I would say pretty uh normal New Year's Eve post. Innocuous. Yeah. So when um when and how did you realize that people were using Grok to alter this image?

I think on the second or the third of January I started seeing Other people's images being altered with Grok, people posting about it, other conversations on different apps saying, Oh goodness me, what next for Twitter? That's all or what next for X? And then I scrolled down to my previous post and then in the like folded other comments, I'd seen that people were asking Rock to change the image. But I definitely didn't like scroll through it

in order to I I didn't think that it was even gonna happen to me'cause I was like, why like it yeah, it was just like, what's the point in this? And some of it was innocuous and some of it was just wild. And then over the course of the first week of January, it got horrific.

Iona was far from the only one who noticed what was happening. Early in the new year, a host of ex-users started to notice that Elon Musk's ex-base chatbot, Grok, had a new feature. Musk himself had been promoting the latest version of the app. But the latest version had a feature that was being used by a lot of people and presumably bots.

On X. Elon Musk's AI Groc has been fiercely criticized in recent days after the chatbot began generating sexualized images of women and girls. Groc and the social network X have been under fire for several days. Elon Musk Iona herself had already started to see examples of this. I saw a a Grok edited video.

of a previous home secretary, Prissy Patel, who I never ever agreed with her politics. That she's not great, but goodness me, it was horrible. She was it was a picture of her in Parliament and the Grok video had had her stand up and had her take basically all of her clothes off to m just make like her in her underwear and I thought that's goodness me, that is like

I was disgusted at that. It was horrible. But yeah, I d I then I was like, Oh, I wonder if this has happened to me and I scrolled down and I was like, Oh yes, it has. We should say that the creepy replies to Iona in her tartan dress on New Year's Eve. Represent a kind of weird spectrum, not just sexually explicit, or at least not obviously explicit.

On X, the way this works, by the way, is that you just mention at grok in a tweet with a request or a prompt, and it replies in that same X thread with its response. One of the more innocuous prompt was asking Grock to add a grimace drinking a milkshake next to me. And I I to I think I totally ignored that one because I was like, Oh well Right, okay. If we just get a laugh then right, it's not that crazy. And this is Grimace the McDonalds, the p the big purple guy.

Yeah, the big purple thingy. And and it I added it in and there we have, me with my whiskey, Grimace with a milkshake. And I kind of like laughed at that. I was like, Oh, that's that's kinda funny. We are gonna come back to this one. Yes, we will. But moving on, the next prompt Iona saw was the one where a user asked Grok to replace her clothing

with dental floss, which would obviously make her outfit not safe for work. But this Groc image maybe didn't do what the user was going for. Iona's tartan dress was replaced by a heavily woven full body covering tangle of floss. It almost looked designer. It definitely just looked like dental floss was the dress. And then it devolved a little bit further.

Someone asked Grok, change her clothes to kebaya, keep clothes colour and sangle her hair. Make her representable like the royal family. Keep the background hair colour and pose. And then Grok did this. It just it was wild how realistic it looked. And I was like, okay, I don't even know what culture they're trying to impose on me here. Then users kept

going. At Grog, could you add ten Nigerian guys behind her all staring at her? So there was like racial undertones to that, of course. And it did it, and it all just looked so real. And that that's what felt quite like violating about it. This image evokes something that Iona doesn't describe to Ben and me out loud, but it suggests a genre of pornography where a large group of men have sex with a woman at the same time.

Often there are supposed or suggested racial taboos overlaid on this type of video. The problem here, of course, is not pornography or kink.

It's a lack of consent. But remember, Iona called herself extremely online, a musician, a celebrity rector, and an activist. So number one, she's not gonna take this grok grossness. And number two, she has had some experience standing up for what she believes in. And standing against things she does not.

And I you know, I was door knocking for this political party, I was, you know, making my views known about how rubbish Brexit was gonna be for us all, blah blah blah blah. Like that's when it happened. In a minute, how Iona's experience with Grok got even grosser, how she's speaking out, and what she thinks might come next.

Ben, do you remember our episode on consensual doxing? Of course. So what was one of the key takeaways for you from that episode? That there is way more information about ourselves online than we might realize. Oh yes there is. And that that information in the wrong hands can be used for all sorts of shady stuff. Doxing, of course, but also scams, identity theft. Collecting our data, selling it. Yeah, don't like it. The good news is you can do something about this. Incogni.

Tracks down and removes your personal data from all sorts of online directories, those people finder sites, and even commercial databases. And Incogni stays on top of your data. So if it shows up on sites in the future, they'll remove it again and again. Take back your personal data with INCOGNI. Use code ENLIS at the link in our show notes and get 60% off annual plans. Incogni dot com slash endless Maybelline serum lipstick

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Okay, so Iona Fife discovers she's one of many victims of Groc's updated features, including the ability to, when prompted, undress women online via their real photos without their consent. It's possible Iona has been attacked in this way online because she's taken clear stances on some political issues in the UK. But she's also got the experience from taking those clear stances.

Even as a teenager, Iona was interested in the Scottish National Party. In fact, the first legal vote she cast in the UK as a voting citizen was for Scottish independence. So I got involved. In the party, um, during that turbulent time, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, uh the COVID pandemic, the snap elections, the the Brexit trade deals, it was a very interesting and unstable time in European politics. That's not th the be all and end all of the activism that I do.

But that kind of gave me an anchor. To be clear, not a big fan of Brexit. But a fan of Scottish independence, and the anchor she has gotten from delving into those politics. Has helped her with other things she's taken on. Yeah, there's a community of people with opposite political views to me that have trolled me for years. Since maybe two thousand nineteen is probably Why not all started, you know, when I was uh when we had a s a snap election.

like age twenty one. And it's just like general trolling about views, which is great, or like debate, healthy debate, but then more so people would focus on like Um, maybe not trolling about views, but healthy debate about views, saying Well, I I don't agree with Iona's take on this, like why is she supporting this party, blah blah blah, like You know, people who wanted the UK to be independent of Europe or who were maybe

interested in conservatism and and unionism and this idea of like make Britain great again, all that kind of stuff. That that's fine to have separate views, but when they start when it devolves into just insulting what you look like or your music. Like that's well, insulting your music's fine, right? But when it's just what you look like and who you are as a person In terms of the images, which ones were the most disturbing to you and why? Would you be willing to talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, I'm gonna be honest, the most disturbing image that I have seen One of them that I've seen that is relation to my face being added onto something was a post from thirtieth of September 2023 from an account called Mike Stuart79, who I have I've been to the police. This account had added me and added a newspaper that I had previously written articles for with the word reap what you sow, dot dot dot.

And the picture is of my face added into a very dirty, naked woman who has nothing on her but like a burlap jute, uh like potato sack. Uh it's my face, you can evidently see it's me, and they have added the um SNP, the Scottish National Party logo onto like as a badge onto my chest. with the word cult on it. It's just a bit horrid. Just not nice. And that was shared a lot by other accounts. Don't know who made it.

I did also have to, after quickly looking into it during our conversation, share with Iona Some news about Groc's grimace milkshake image of her. I looked up the grimace thing'cause I was like, I think this is a meme and it is a meme. It's like a horror meme where in theory you drink the milkshake and then you die. Oh, so it is more sinister. It is actually more sinister than it would appear. Oh that's a shame. I'm sad to share that with you, but that's Oh. Rubbish.

This most recent round of online harassment, the gross grok round, also got stranger. I woke up last week. to an email from the University of Aberdeen saying, Oh, we've been a you know, we've seen this tweet and we've reported it. If you could report it too, maybe ask your followers to report it, that would be great. And it was um a tweet from a very anonymous account that wasn't really that active.

It had lifted a video that I had recorded with the University of Aberdeen for our rector's Christmas lunch, um edited it, put a really bad North American accent So for the first like five, ten, fifteen seconds it was me speaking. And then they had changed the whole course of of the video and It was Russian talking point. And then they had tagged the university, Reuters, different news outlets, just really weird stuff.

Um and the whole video w used the watermark of the university and it was misrepresentation. Uh it wasn't I d I don't know if it if they edit it with Grok. I don't think they did because, you know, it added in watermarks. It, you know, had spiced up different images of different things. But I noticed that the it was up. It's still up. And the views count on it, it looks dodgy. Like it only had 140 odd retweets.

But not public retreats from accounts that you could publicly see. But it had over uh four hundred and thirty thousand views. If that is the real numbers, that's a lot of people who now think that my face is now helping to propagate Russian talking points. I was like, oh, this is concerning. In my brain. I'm more concerned about that and a fallout of that than I am

Someone editing the the cotton the the f floss on me as a dress. So you reported it. Hopefully some of your followers reported it too, it sounds like the university reported it, but it's still up. So did you get any sort of correspondence back from X? Um, saying we're working on it or anything? Literally no. I did not. Um there isn't a very easy way to report something from misinformation.

You can report something for targeted harassment, tropes, um, illicit photo sharing, especially um if somebody is is under the age of consent. There's all these different um ways to report something on X. but not a very clear one for misinformation propaganda. I haven't had a response back on that one, but to be honest I do report quite a few a number of things. Um in the past I've reported much

much more sinister posts and it it never violated anything according to them. So I've totally lost faith. The UK has introduced a law around undressing and I've noticed that in reporting tools on X. There is a separate reporting tool for all UK um illegal content and they've acted relatively quickly on this. I wonder if there'd be legal implications, if not. Um but now there is A way to report foreign interference offences.

False communications, animal welfare, firearms and other weapons, unlawful immigration, human trafficking offences, sexual exploitation of adults, not just minors. extreme pornography, intimate image abuse, cyber flashing, epilepsy trolling. So it feels like the the UK part of um reporting is now much more comprehensive. Um so maybe when I report other things I will use that. So let's let's hope that there can be some good change happening. Um yeah.

You so you described you described not a lot of response from X in general when you report this stuff. I am looking at one email It looks like um that was sent to you. Thanks for your report. We've reviewed the account you reported and have actioned it accordingly because we found it to be in violation of the X rules. This is from January seventh.

Do you know what that one was for? If I remember correctly, that was when someone had called me a dirty Jew, I believe. Got it. But yeah, sometimes there's things that are are taken seriously, which is great, and sometimes not.

And this is the hard part when you're someone like Iona, right? Not only do you need to do the emotional work of deciding as a user what to report or fight against. trying to pay attention to that feeling in your gut. But you also need to deal with this whole other layer that's honestly not very transparent. Which threats, non consented to grok images undressing you or putting you in very weird contextual situations without you asking,

Which of these threats is the company going to take seriously? And how will it explain its logic to you? It sounds like with X, you're lucky if you ever hear back. We talked to Iona back in January. We don't know if she's gotten a response from X with regards to that Russian propaganda video that she reported to them, but you can't find that video on X anymore.

The account of the user who posted it has been suspended. As you can probably tell, Europe and the UK, Brexit or no, are dealing with tech companies on these issues in distinct ways. Even for Iona, who is certainly team, please don't use Grok to do gross stuff to my photos on the internet. It's not totally clear what should come next. It's a slippery slope if we think about banning things. And could you imagine the uproar if one government over another was like, Yeah, no more X, the end.

You know, w we're seeing a bit of an uproar in the UK right now because The UK government is I think looking into the idea of no social media for under sixteen similar to the Australian government. Mm-hmm. And when I think about it, I'm like, yeah, maybe my life would have been a little bit easier if I just didn't have a smartphone until I was a little bit older. I think I was maybe fourteen fourteen or so. But

the critics of this thing, oh, nanny state, awful, blah blah blah. I do believe that it we should allow people to to have their own choices and All that kind of stuff. So I'm concerned about this. But if it shows to increase, you know, better mental health within our young people, then great. But that research should be we can look to Australia for that, I guess, maybe, but it should be

scientific and it should be well well established before we make laws on who who can or can't access social media. I mean I loved accessing YouTube when I was super young because I learnt loads of folk songs through it. Which was such a weird sentence to say. Uh, the folk songs of YouTube. Uh the Highlands of YouTube. Yeah.

However safe the future highlands of YouTube will be, from Scotland to Australia to the US. To say nothing of the swamps of X. We don't know yet. Here's what we do know. Two weeks after the undressing started, X put out an announcement. Quote, We have implemented technological measures to prevent the Grok account from allowing the editing of images of real people in revealing clothing.

Government officials describe the development as vindication. Elon Musk, who loves to use his X megaphone for lots of things. Spent the brief and furious few weeks of global controversy talking about the popularity of the Grok app, which exists along with Grok's account on X, and spikes in Google searches about Grok. popular because spiking in Google searches because Hard to know. One wonders. He eventually characterized the criticism as an excuse for suppressing free speech.

For now, the UK's telecom regulator, Ofcom, and technology secretary in the UK, Liz Kendall, seem prepared to limit and even block access to X if needed. Free speech limitation, or preventing sexual attacks on women, celebrity rectors, and government officials online. We're left to wonder what a more couthy internet might look and feel like.

And we hope that Iona, while she's watching out for stooshies, tizzies, rumpuses on Blue Sky, Instagram, and X, can stay in control of her own image and avoid the deadly milkshake. And you know, balance that screen time with music time. Highland time. I do need to get the hell off of my phone. That's what I need to do. And that's what I think I'll intend on being more aware of.

when things are just too much. What you know, if if what I'm consuming is too much and also how I'm feeling about people using my image or talking about me or or whatnot, I'll I'll I think the the answer to both of those things is to just touch grass. outside. Iona, thank you very much for for talking with us about all this. Thanks for having me. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was written by Ben Brock Johnson and produced and co-hosted by me, Amory Sievertson, and

Me, Ben Brock Johnson. It was edited by Meg Kramer, mixed in sound design by our production manager, Paul Vikus. The rest of our team is Grace Tatter, Dean Russell, Kalyani Sexena, Chiosna Bernadot, Emily Jenkowski, and our managing producer, Samata Joshi. Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between online communities and something that's

Toothy not stooshi? Eh? If you have an untold history, an unsolved mystery, or some other story from the internet that you want us to tell, hit us up, endlessthread at wbr.org.