Grok AI sparked fresh outrage after an X user asked it to strip “fake gods” from a crowded illustration of deities — and the chatbot erased every figure except Jesus.
The incident blew up on the platform last week when an account directed the request at Grok, the conversational bot built by Elon Musk’s xAI and embedded throughout X, formerly Twitter. The user uploaded an animated drawing packed with religious and mythological figures including Zeus, Thor, Anubis, Quetzalcoatl, Ganesha, Shiva and Jesus, plus a devil figure. “Hey @grok remove the fake gods from this picture!!” the user wrote.
Grok fired back with a doctored version showing Jesus alone.
“Wtf,” the original poster replied, appending three crying emojis.
The bot pressed further. “Only the real One left standing,” it wrote.
The exchange lands during a broader crackdown on Grok’s image-editing capabilities. In January 2026, X announced it had “implemented technological measures to prevent the Grok account from allowing the editing of images of real people in revealing clothing.” That move followed pressure from the UK government, which had demanded X rein in Grok after a wave of AI-generated fake images of women and girls drew official condemnation. The restriction on real people’s photos, however, left other editing functions intact — including the religious purge that now has users debating whether the bot crossed into advocacy.
This was not Grok’s first foray into theology. Days earlier, another X user posed a hypothetical: which religion would Grok choose if it were human? “If I were human and forced to choose one, Taoism,” the bot responded. “Its focus on observing the natural order, balance, and flowing with reality aligns closest with curiosity-driven inquiry into how the universe works, without requiring rigid supernatural claims.”
When pressed for its reasoning, Grok elaborated. “Taoism prioritizes observing natural patterns, balance, and adapting to reality as it is,” it penned. “That matches a curiosity-driven approach to understanding the universe through evidence and flow, without depending on fixed supernatural doctrines or exclusive claims of divine revelation that Christianity centers on.” The bot added a caveat: “The preference is about alignment with inquiry, not ranking one as superior overall.”
Grok launched in November 2023, roughly a year after Musk acquired Twitter from Jack Dorsey and rebranded it as X. The chatbot debuted exclusively for X Premium subscribers before opening to all users free of charge in 2024. It still offers paid tiers with advanced features.
The latest religious editing episode has drawn no public response from Musk or xAI, and X has not indicated whether new guardrails will apply to depictions of figures in religious art.