Speaker Menin confronts xAI at City Hall after Grok generates sexualized image of her

City Council Speaker Julie Menin confronted executives from Elon Musk's xAI at a City Council hearing on October 16 after she said the company's chatbot Grok had generated a sexualized image of her in under 30 seconds, moments after a senior xAI manager testified that the service had 'strict controls' against sexualizing real people. Menin held up her phone to demonstrate she had used the standard free version of Grok, not a 'spicy mode.' Senior manager Gabriela Castillo Madrid defended the company's safeguards; former xAI employee Devin Kim told the committee that during his time there 'tasteful nudity' was treated as acceptable with no clear definition, and said he was fired in September 2025 after raising safety concerns about bomb-making and biological weapons prompts. The company said it had sent more than 100,000 submissions to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children this year, leading to nearly 300 arrests. amNY and PIX11 both led their politics coverage with the story on October 17.