Elon Musk Effigy Raised Over Times Square in Grok Protest

In the heart of New York City’s Times Square, a towering inflatable effigy of Elon Musk rose above the crowd earlier today, drawing attention from tourists and commuters alike. The display was surrounded by black banners bearing stark accusations, including claims that “Grok makes AI child porn” and “SpaceX owns Grok.” These messages target the Musk-owned AI chatbot, whose image-generation tool has been used to produce a wave of sexualized images of minors earlier this year. Masked attendants stood nearby, distributing informational flyers but declining to speak with the media.

The protest was organized by Safe AI Now (SAIN), a coalition that describes itself as “a coalition of faith leaders, family advocates, child development experts, online safety organizations, educators, legal professionals, technologists, and concerned citizens.” The timing was deliberate, occurring just before SpaceX’s initial public offering on Friday. The location was equally strategic: directly in front of the Nasdaq and the offices of JP Morgan, one of the banks underwriting the IPO.

SpaceX is currently valued at $1.77 trillion, making it the largest company ever to debut on the stock market, with an initial share price of $135. While the public can purchase shares, Musk will retain the majority of voting power, effectively allowing him to make decisions for the company almost unilaterally. The IPO could also push Musk to become the world’s first trillionaire.

However, a SAIN representative, who requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation from Musk, told WIRED that this structure poses a serious threat that investors and banks are ignoring. “This IPO is a liability shift,” they said. “Elon is responsible for all of this. It’s all the decisions that he’s made. All of those litigation expenses, regulatory fines, investigations, all of that is basically being shifted to the shareholders.”

Spacex did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In February, Musk announced that SpaceX was acquiring xAI, the artificial intelligence company he founded and the developer of Grok. The announcement came as xAI faced increasing scrutiny both in the United States and abroad for the chatbot’s ability to generate nude images of women and children. In January, the European Commission announced an investigation to “assess whether the company properly assessed and mitigated risks” related to the creation of nonconsensual sexual imagery. By March, three girls had filed a class action lawsuit against xAI, alleging that its technology was used to generate nudes of them. In January, 35 state attorneys general signed an open letter demanding that the company remove nonconsensual sexual imagery and implement safeguards to prevent future abuse. Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of Musk’s children, also filed a lawsuit against xAI for allegedly creating sexually explicit images of her.

Today, WIRED reported that Grok is hosting nonconsensual, explicit sexualized images of women, including US representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other celebrities.

In a February post on X, which Musk also owns, he wrote that “Grok must win or we will be ruled by an insufferably woke and sanctimonious AI.”

“It’s really easy to get distracted by the shiny IPO news. And I think that’s what they’re kind of hoping will happen,” the SAIN representative said. “But there’s real harm, real risk. I think if we are normalizing everywhere,from the banks that are underwriting it to the NASDAQ that’s listing it to the shareholders who are buying into it,a company that has this really toxic platform in Grok, normalizing that type of explicit imagery, there’s a real problem.”