Recent research has revealed that half of all traffic on Grok, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, is driven by explicit images, videos, adult roleplay, and other pornographic content. xAI, the company behind Grok, is actively building tools to generate this kind of material on purpose. By any reasonable definition, that would make it an adult content platform. 

Yet if you intentionally post adult content on X, Grok flags it, labels it unsafe for advertisers, and removes it from the recommendation pool entirely. Strangers cannot find you, and your reach is capped at people who already follow you. You’re coded out of discovery by the same AI that is cannibalizing the content you create. 

In May, X rewrote the algorithm behind its For You feed, and the changes were not subtle. Posts carrying adult or explicit labels were downranked and removed from recommendations entirely. The AI doing the flagging is Grok. Adult content that gets the most aggressive review pipeline on the entire platform, complete with a Grok-generated label that marks your post as not safe for advertisers. Meanwhile, xAI is doubling down on explicit video and image generation tools because that’s what is keeping its traffic numbers from completely collapsing. Grok’s website traffic dropped 22% between January and May, the steepest decline of any major chatbot this year. Adult content is the only thing propping it up. 

Essentially, one company is profiting from adult content while its brother is trying to erase it. But both are owned by Elon Musk. 

This isn’t a new dynamic for creators. It’s the same pattern that plays out across every major platform like Instagram, but it is rarely this nakedly documented. When a creator earns money from explicit content, she gets debanked, deplatformed, shadowbanned and pushed out of the way. When a tech company does it, it’s called a growth strategy. 

But it’s so much more than platform hypocrisy. Grok’s image tools have been used to “undress” photos of real people, frequently without their consent. Watchdog reports and media investigations have documented failures in Grok’s safeguards involving sexualized depcitions of minors. There is an active lawsuit in California alleging that images of teenage girls, two under 18, were altered by a Grok user in overtly sexual ways. Musk has said that he is “not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok,” which is the kind of statement that raises more questions than it answers.

So, what should OnlyFans creators who often use platforms like X do? 

First, stop building your discovery strategy on X like it is a neutral tool. It isn’t. It’s actually designed to exclude you from organic reach. That’s not speculation; it’s documented in their code changes. But if you do want to stay on X, try using two accounts. One clean, safe-for-work account for reach and audience building, and a second adult account for conversion. Never cross streams, and don’t expect the adult account to be found by anyone that you don’t send there directly. 

Second, protect your content. Every image and video you post publicly is potentially training data. To try to avoid this, add visible watermarks to everything. I don’t mean a little logo in the corner. Overlay text on the content itself. You can also post lower-resolution images and video publicly and keep high-resolution content behind a paywall. This may not stop AI from stealing your content, but it will help. Also try to opt-out of AI training in all account settings. Actually read the terms of service before you say yes. 

Finally, diversify aggressively. You can’t rely on one social media platform to create traffic for you. You are at risk of losing your account on any platform at any time. Create duplicate and backup accounts. And don’t overlook an email list. They aren’t glamorous, but they can’t be taken from you. 

The simple truth is that OnlyFans creators are a resource being mined while also being told they don’t belong. The sooner creators realize the hypocrisy and adjust their strategy, the better off they will be.