What happened

Signify, an organisation that works with prominent groups and clubs in sports to track and report online hate, said it has seen a sharp increase in reports of abuse since Grok strengthened its image generation capabilities in December 2024.

Examples include an image depicting a Black player picking cotton; another shows the same player eating a banana surrounded by monkeys in a forest. 

Other images depict a number of players and managers meeting and conversing with controversial historical figures such as Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

England's Premier League is reportedly aware of the situation. It has established measures to report and combat racist abuse, which reportedly exceeded 1,500 reports in 2024.

Why it happened

The emergence of Grok-generated racist images can be attributed to several factors, notably the lack of effective safeguards. 

Unlike other AI tools that have stricter guidelines, Grok's system has many time sbeen shown to be easily manipulated or "jailbroken" by users to generate inappropriate images.