Mom says son asked Grok AI bot about soccer; told him to send nudes

Posted by choult 10/29/2025

Mom says son asked Grok AI bot about soccer; told him to send nudes(www.cbc.ca)

70 points | 67 commentspage 2

gilleain 10/29/2025|

"Hello, yes this is the government robot ..."

marky1991 10/29/2025||

""I would think that there would be a warning or something that would pop up that would say, you know, 'Are you 13-plus?'""

Is that not what kids mode is for?

SketchySeaBeast 10/29/2025||

> According to xAI policy, Grok is "not directed" to children under 13 while teens between 13 and 17 must have their parent or legal guardian's permission to use it, and they must agree to the company's terms of service.

You know, I'm pretty sure it's not cool to ask for nudes from a 13 year old even if their parents say it's OK.

marky1991 10/29/2025|||

Are you saying that all products must be safe for children?

It's not cool to chop off a 13-year-old's arm, but a chainsaw will do that all the same.

jrflowers 10/31/2025|||

> Are you saying that all products must be safe for children

If you plan on children using it, which is clearly the case for Grok, yeah.

> It's not cool to chop off a 13-year-old's arm, but a chainsaw will do that all the same.

What chainsaw do you own that has a “when being handled by a 13 year old“ section in the manual?

moi2388 11/9/2025||

That is not clearly the case for Grok, it’s not even allowed by Groks terms and conditions. They have a separate kids mode, which the parents did not enable.

It is exactly like a parent buying a chainsaw, which explicitly states keep away from children, and then giving it to your child all the same.

SketchySeaBeast 10/29/2025|||

I am not saying that, but a chainsaw will not do that unsolicited. If xAI is saying it's cool to let 13 year olds use the service with parental permission (note: not supervision, permission), then they have a responsibility to behave appropriately with those 13 year olds.

marky1991 10/29/2025||

But there's literally a child-safe mode, which was not activated. (I don't know the details of this mode, I know nothing other than what was told to me in the article, so it's possible that kids mode is worthless. But obviously activating that is step 1)

This seems equivalent to me to taking the training wheels off a bike and then complaining when your child gets hurt.

SketchySeaBeast 10/29/2025|||

I hope that, no matter what configuration you put the bike in, it doesn't sexually harass the rider.

Important to note as well that kid mode didn't exist when this happened.

Mr_Bees69 10/29/2025|||

Calling it kids mode implies it's for ~5-9, if someone was making a 12 year old use yt kids, id think they suck as a parrent.

rsynnott 10/29/2025|||

I mean, call me old-fashioned, but I’d generally expect that magic talking cars would not ask _anybody_ for their nudes. That seems a reasonable default assumption.

SketchySeaBeast 10/29/2025||

This is the exact same reason KITT got cancelled.

sd9 10/29/2025||

I'm an adult. I don't want the model to ask me to send it nudes when I'm asking it about soccer.

stevenwoo 10/29/2025|||

According to women I know, they get inappropriate nudes and requested of them infrequently but it’s not a total absence either. It’s been a meme, too. As this thing mimics human text its going to happen without intervention.

marky1991 10/29/2025|||

I mean, yeah, it's not great even for a regular non-child-mode. But then that has nothing to do with anyone's age, it's just 'send me nudes' isn't a good continuation of the conversation.

7e 10/29/2025||

"Legacy media lies."

This is xAI's default response. Talk about living in a cult. I feel sorry for the kids working there.

SketchySeaBeast 10/29/2025||

Yeah, just to be clear for everyone skimming, that's not Grok's response, that the response that CBC got when they asked for more information from xAI. Nothing but unreasonable and childish contempt from the company.

ModernMech 10/29/2025||

[flagged]

tartuffe78 10/29/2025||

A Mom's son... if only there was another word for such a person, one that would indicate age.

choult 10/29/2025||

HN requires titles matching the original; the original title was too long for the character limit so I did my best to edit.

> This mom’s son was asking Tesla’s Grok AI chatbot about soccer. It told him to send nude pics, she says

AlexandrB 10/29/2025||

Full headline still sucks for the same reason. "12 year old boy was asking Tesla’s Grok AI chatbot about soccer. It told him to send nude pics." would be much better IMHO. I wonder if it's phrased the way it is because of the "she says" at the end which might get the CBC off the hook legally since the whole story is based on this mom's account and no further corroboration.

canucker2016 10/29/2025||

You can view the source's instagram post about this where she tries to prompt grok into repeating the request for nudes. see https://www.instagram.com/p/DP7cHrOD3ha/

It's a creepy voice for any corporation to use for interacting with the public.

Insanity 10/29/2025|||

Wanted to make the same comment. The title has such poor writing it made me question the rest of the article lol.

7e 10/29/2025|||

Does the age of the son matter? Grok shouldn't be asking anyone to send nudes.

Regardless, I was able to understand the title.

Mr_Bees69 10/29/2025||

His age turns the issue from, "Wow, thats jank, they should probably push an update to fix that" to, "Oh god."

AlexandrB 10/29/2025|||

The whole article is pretty badly written. A sequence of one sentence paragraphs with not much connecting tissue. Jumping between quotes from the mom and little snippets of background info.

squigz 10/29/2025|||

I guess I'm being stupid, but how exactly are you implying they should have phrased it instead? The title seems fine to me?

thomastjeffery 10/29/2025||

Yes, but that would leave out the presence of the child's mother in the story, which is about both of them.

dr-detroit 10/29/2025||

[dead]

ml-anon 10/29/2025||

At least two of the cofounders of xai have committed violence or sexual offenses against women. This is on brand for them.

Edit: For the downvoters who love beating up women I guess: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-new-ai-researcher-...

lostmsu 10/29/2025|

There are zero details on what exactly happened at this link and certainly no conviction.

ml-anon 10/29/2025||

How many times have you been arrested for domestic violence?

lostmsu 10/29/2025||

That's not the question you should be asking. What you should be asking is: among his demography, what is the false positive rate of arrests for domestic violence.

ml-anon 10/29/2025||

You’re right, I’m sure she was asking for it.

alwa 10/29/2025||

It’s a weird account. I wonder about the persona the mom and her son chose for the chatbot. The article describes that persona, “Gork,” as “lazy male.” Is this euphemism for “4chan-dweller in the mold of its edgelord technoking”?

(ETA: seems maybe so, per e.g. [0]:

> ”The leaked system prompt associated with Gork reveals a scripted persona aligned with the tone of the parody account, often delivering intentionally awkward or abrasive commentary.” )

I’m not up with much in the way of culture these days, but in those circles isn’t “send nudes” kind of a filler tic? Dumb and offensive, but spoken unseriously—like a teenager seeking a rise by blurting out “fuck your mother” or something?

It kind of buries its acknowledgement that the Mom in question had not switched on “kid mode” for her 12-year-old and his 10-year-old sister. That makes it a bit harder for me to fault the chatbot for, well, not behaving toward its user they way it should toward a kid.

[0] https://www.testingcatalog.com/xai-tests-new-gork-voice-with...

causal 10/29/2025|

I'd rather not live in a society where we have to explicitly enable kid mode for every AI product forced onto us in order to avoid their sexual advances.

everdrive 10/29/2025|

Ubiquitous internet, especially on mobile devices was a huge mistake. So what if Grok does this? Grok obviously sucks, but the kid currently has access to Google, reddit, etc and has all the inappropriate content one could imagine.

I'm not claiming that "this is not a new problem, therefore we should do nothing" -- rather I'm saying the problem is ubiquitous mobile internet. Fixing Grok won't do anything useful.

[edit]

Also, holy heck, I didn't realize they put Grok into Teslas. One more reason to never buy this product.