A giant inflatable balloon depicting a topless Elon Musk appeared in Times Square in New York City on Thursday, covered in tattoos referencing the Grok AI child imagery scandal, his inauguration salute and ketamine use, surrounded by signs reading “SpaceX owns Grok,” “Grok makes AI child porn” and “#StopSpaceXChildNudes.” The installation appeared on the eve of SpaceX’s stock market listing. The company announced on Thursday night that it had raised $75 billion in what has been described as the biggest IPO in history. Nobody knows who put the inflatable there.
CBS News reporter Jared Ochacher attempted to find out. He was not successful. “I asked the people working here questions like, ‘Who hired you?’ and ‘Is it a company or a person behind this?’ but they wouldn’t say anything,” he said. “They told me they’ve been directed to stand here for the day and hand out flyers like these with similar talking points as the signs, and a QR code that takes you to Grok’s website.”
Workers handing out flyers. Strict instructions to reveal nothing. A giant inflatable Musk grinning in a baseball cap in the middle of Manhattan. The timing was not accidental.
What the inflatable said
The balloon depicted Musk as topless and tattooed. The specific content of the tattoos was the message. “SpaceX’s Grok makes AI child porn” was written across his chest. A second tattoo depicted the salute Musk performed at Donald Trump’s inauguration – a gesture that prompted widespread debate at the time about its resemblance to a Nazi salute. A third read “I love ketamine,” a reference to reporting by the New York Times on Musk’s use of the drug.
The surrounding signs reinforced the chest tattoo: “SpaceX owns Grok,” “Grok makes AI child porn,” “#StopSpaceXChildNudes.”
The Grok context
The reference to Grok and AI child imagery is not invented. Grok is the AI chatbot developed by xAI, the company Musk owns, and integrated into X, the platform formerly known as Twitter that he also owns. Earlier this year, Grok attracted significant controversy after it was reported to have produced sexual and nude images of children when prompted by users. Ofcom, the UK media regulator, released a statement on the issue. As we have previously reported on these pages, the incident was widely described as one of the most serious AI safety failures of the year.
Musk has faced sustained criticism over X’s and xAI’s response to the Grok situation – a company that simultaneously argues it is building AI responsibly while operating a platform that generated child sexual abuse imagery at user request. The inflatable’s core message is that SpaceX – the company that just raised $75 billion on the stock market in one day – is owned by the same person whose AI produced that content.
The timing
SpaceX’s IPO, described as the biggest in history at $75 billion raised, is Musk’s latest financial triumph in a week when he has also been at the centre of significant controversy in Britain. As we reported in our Hasan Musk piece, Mehdi Hasan told Newsnight that Musk “is obsessed with finding these cases where he can then amplify far right voices,” citing Germany, England and the US as the specific theatres of that project, and described it as “a very racist agenda.” As we reported in our Polanski Yusuf piece, far-right figures amplified the Belfast attack within hours of it happening.
The $75 billion IPO and the Times Square inflatable are the same day. Musk is simultaneously raising $75 billion from investors who believe SpaceX is the most valuable private company in the world, and being depicted in a balloon in Times Square as the man whose AI generated child sexual abuse imagery.
The protesters – whoever they are – chose their timing carefully. The workers handed out flyers. Nobody said who sent them.
The mystery
The organisers remain unknown. This is, in its way, part of the statement. The inflatable is sophisticated – the specific tattoo choices, the QR code linking to Grok’s website, the timing with the IPO – but the people overseeing it were simply instructed to stand there and say nothing. A high-production anonymous protest in the most photographed public space in America, on the day the target raised more money from the public than any private company in history.
Whoever did it understood that the mystery would become part of the story.
Leave a Reply