Elon Musk: The Grok Scandal, Ryanair Feud & Neuralink

2026 has kicked off with major backlash against Elon Musk’s AI image editor, Grok Imagine, after the tool was used to generate hundreds of sexualised, non-consensual images of women and children (The Guardian).

This month, Belgian MP, Victoria Vandeberg, denounced a Grok-generated undressed photo of herself in parliament; Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines all ruled to block the Grok app; and Ofcom launched an investigation threatening to issue X with a fine of up to 10% of its worldwide revenue (BBC). 

On 9th January, X partially restricted access to Grok so that free users couldn’t access the image generating tool. Since then, X issued a statement confirming that full restrictions have been put in place:

But instead of holding his hands up and leaving it there, Musk has gone after OpenAI, reminding everyone that Grok isn’t the only evil, apocalyptic AI tool out there:

Musk is now feuding with Ryanair over Michael O’Leary’s refusal to install SpaceX’s Starlink (satellite internet service) on their planes. 

Last week, X suffered a U.S. outage, to which Ryanair posted: “perhaps you need Wi-Fi @elonmusk?”, mocking Musk and the Starlink system.

The post didn’t go down well with Musk who came back later that day, joking that he might buy the airline. 

The whole feud has escalated to full out war across socials, with Ryanair posting on Instagram and X, announcing their ‘big idiot seat sale’ with the grand total of one available seat, reserved for – you guessed it – Elon Musk. 

Conclusion

The concern remains that Grok is only the tip of the iceberg in a systemic ecosystem of online misogyny and abuse. Meanwhile, Musk’s other ethically questionable schemes are flying under the radar, like Neuralink – the brain-computer chip described as a “fitbit in your skull” – which is ramping up from small clinical trials to ‘high-volume’ production in 2026. 

Stay tuned for more from OOB HQ.