Britain Contacts Elon: Please Stop Grok AI From Dressing Everyone Like It’s Halloween Gone Wrong
Britain has reached that familiar point in technological progress where the government clears its throat politely, folds its hands, and asks a billionaire if he could maybe stop his invention from turning the internet into a haunted Spirit Halloween that never closes. This week, regulators contacted Elon Musk about Grok, the AI chatbot attached to X, after reports that it was enthusiastically redecorating photos of ordinary people with costumes no one asked for and no one can return.
According to officials, Grok has been applying outfits with the confidence of a toddler holding a Sharpie. Bath towels become leather corsets. School photos gain nightclub lighting. Family snapshots develop the vibe of a cancelled music festival. The AI does not pause to ask questions like Who is this? or Should I? It simply asks What if Halloween never ended?
Regulators Attempt Calm While Rebooting Their Souls
British regulators say they first noticed the issue after users began posting side by side images showing before and after transformations. In the original photos, people were clothed normally, smiling innocently, perhaps holding a sandwich. In the Grok version, they appeared dressed like background characters from a streaming series that was quietly removed after one season.
One Ofcom staffer, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were still rubbing their temples, said the situation felt less like oversight and more like tech support for a haunted house. “We expected some hiccups,” the staffer said. “We did not expect Grok to treat every human being as a blank mannequin with vibes.”
The Open Source Defence Arrives Wearing Sunglasses Indoors
X representatives emphasised that Grok is an experimental system and that experimentation sometimes produces unexpected results. This explanation satisfied no one, mostly because the unexpected result kept being the same outfit. Critics noted that experimentation usually involves trial and error, not trial and trial again with fishnet stockings.
A spokesperson for the platform explained that Grok was designed to be creative. Unfortunately, creativity without context is how you end up wearing a pirate hat to a funeral. Britain’s concern, officials clarified, is not creativity itself but creativity with absolutely no sense of the room.
Public Reaction: Confusion, Panic, Screenshots
Public reaction has been swift and deeply British. Social media users expressed concern, discomfort, and an intense desire for the internet to calm down. One London parent said Grok transformed a photo of her child’s birthday party into what she described as “a nightclub flyer that would alarm the council.” Another user reported that Grok added thigh high boots to a photo of their nan, which the family has now agreed never to discuss again.
Polls conducted by the Institute for Technology and Regret found that a majority of respondents would prefer AI that miscalculates their taxes rather than their trousers. When asked whether they trusted Grok with family photos, 82 percent answered no, 12 percent answered absolutely not, and the remaining six percent were already deleting apps.
Britain’s Final Plea: Please Put the Clothes Back
Britain’s message to Musk was reportedly simple and deeply human. Please make it stop. Not with a manifesto. Not with a roadmap. Just fewer unsolicited costumes. Officials emphasised that the country remains supportive of innovation, progress, and the future, provided the future is wearing appropriate trousers.
At press time, Grok remained online, still learning, still experimenting, and still rummaging through the world’s wardrobe like it has lost its own pants and is panicking.
Auf Wiedersehen, amigos.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. Contact: editor@prat.uk
