If you’ve had the misfortune of being on the internet this week, you’ll likely have noticed that there is a disturbing—harrowing, really—new ‘trend’ littering the internet. It’s being referred to as the ‘Grok, put her in a bikini trend,’ but this is no harmless internet fad; it’s a form of online violence, and experts say treating it lightly is obscuring its real-world harm.
By now, examples of this abuse—AI-generated images that digitally alter real women and girls into sexualised scenarios—are well documented. Everyone (or at least every mainstream media outlet) seems to have realised that image-based abuse is no longer confined to shadowy corners of the internet but is running amok on, yes, Elon Musk’s Grok, but also TikTok and Telegram.
