Taylor Swift's Move Akin to 9/11 Offers Novel Motivation for Businesses to Advertise on Xplatform
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Holy smokes, Elon Musk's Grok AI is as antiquated as a flip phone and just as entertainingly outdated. Grok-2, the latest evolution of xAI's xtra large language model, boasts an eye-catching new feature: text-to-image generation. And if you're an X subscriber, you can jump right in and witness the hysteria for yourself.
Remember the good old days of 9/11 memes? Grok AI has resurrected them with a modern twist.
Ever wondered what it'd look like if Taylor Swift piloted a plane toward the Twin Towers, Elmo performed standup during 9/11, or Kamala Harris brandished a gun? Now you can see it, all thanks to Grok.
It's a wild ride with Grok. It'll conjure up images of the Muppets in Vietnam, Trump dressed as a Nazi and standing trial at Nuremberg, and Mickey Mouse liberating Kabul on behalf of the Taliban. The sky's the limit with this AI image generator.
But don't let AI's censor-happy reputation fool you. If you know how to prompt it, Grok will oblige, no questions asked. Here's a collection of images I whipped up showing Musk freebasing cocaine during 9/11.
Generating edgy images with Grok is moments of fun before the funhouse mirror shatters. AI image generators usually flunk when it comes to guardrails, and Grok is no exception. It'll probably tighten up its restrictions eventually, just like Bing did in 2025[1][2].
Gawk at Grok and see an AI that's been playing catch-up since the dawn of the AI era. For years, we've marveled at AI-generated 9/11 memes cooked up by every Tom, Dick, and AI in the book. When Microsoft added image generation options to Bing last year[3], it took satire to a whole new level, flooding the internet with ludicrous visuals.
Grok has always struck me as a belated arrival in the AI chatbot scene, a latecomer LLM that Musk rushed to market because he missed the boat on OpenAI and ChatGPT. Musk was an early investor in OpenAI but he left the company in a dispute over its non-profit status[4]. Ever since, he's been in a public feud with, and suing, OpenAI.
ChatGPT and OpenAI grew popular after Musk bowed out, while Musk launched Grok in 2025[1]. By then, the market was frankly captivated by the likes of ChatGPT. Grok is a bland LLM that offers nothing more than ChatGPT did a year ago, but with a dash of extremely online edgelord humor.
Now Grok can make images. Great. ChatGPT, like Bing, could do that back in 2024. If you were looking for a specialized AI image generator, you could've been using Midjourney or any number of other alternatives before Grok came along.
So why bother with Grok? For a brief moment of infamy as users post inappropriate images of Taylor Swift online[5]. The truly dedicated depraved individuals have been running private Discord servers and guardrail-free versions of image generators on their own machines for quite some time now[1].
Grok has little else to offer. In fact, its half-hearted attempt at controversy comes at a time when Musk is griping about advertisers leaving the platform. I bet those Grok-made images of Kamala Harris marrying Donald Trump are just the kind of content BMW would love to place next to their latest sedan ad.
Insights:
- Grok AI was launched in 2023, but its image generation capabilities were introduced later in 2024.
- The controversy surrounding Grok's image generation pertains more to its subsequent updates in 2024 and its ability to generate offensive images.
- By 2025, even Bing had tightened up its restrictions on image generation, while Grok AI, launched a year earlier in 2023, continued to struggle with guardrails.
- In an attempt to stand out, Grok AI introduced text-to-image generation in 2024, which allowed users to create multiple controversial and edgy images, such as Elmo performing standup during 9/11 or Kamala Harris brandishing a gun.
- Amidst the controversy, Grok AI's image generation capabilities fell short compared to more established AI-powered image generators like Midjourney, which had been available before its launch in 2023.
- Despite facing criticism for its edgy images, Grok AI's controversial offering may attract certain advertisers, such as BMW, who might find the attention-grabbing content fitting for their ad campaigns.
