Musk Kilos One other Nail Into The Tesla Gross sales Coffin

Final Up to date on: sixth August 2025, 11:24 am

There he goes once more. Earlier this week Tesla CEO Elon Musk scored a $29 billion payout from the Tesla board to stay round, simply as phrase dropped that his Grok AI chatbot is glad to supply suggestive deepfakes of Taylor Swift on command and shoot them out throughout Musk’s social media platform, X. It certain seems to be like Musk simply earned his $29 billion, having closed the infamous EV gender hole in a single fell swoop. Tens of millions of Swifties will probably be falling over themselves to purchase a Telsa EV now, amirite, Tesla followers? What about you, Swifties?

Tesla Gross sales & The EV Gender Hole

There actually is a infamous EV gender hole and Tesla, because the longtime EV trade chief, bears a lot of the duty. Right here within the US, for instance, girls are credited with accounting for extra new automotive gross sales than males by roughly 60-40, however the state of affairs is considerably reversed for EVs at roughly 30-70.

Final 12 months the analysis agency Escalent deployed its US and European market information to evaluate the state of affairs. The conclusion was that EV “possession, purchasing and consciousness are largely male-dominated, with males making up 71% of householders and 74% of customers and usually conducting extra exploratory analysis all through the buying course of.”

To the extent that Tesla has dominated the media highlight in addition to the EV gross sales image, the male-centricity of the EV market is on Elon Musk. In spite of everything, he’s a advertising genius, proper?

Gender hole or not, Tesla loved a years-long trajectory of gross sales development. The corporate dominated the twenty first century EV market proper out of the field and all the things seemed rosy proper up till final 12 months when hints of a Tesla gross sales nosedive started to appear.

By the start of this 12 months, all indicators have been pointing to a crimson alert as Musk turned his consideration to working the US authorities as a substitute of attempting to get the gross sales chart again on monitor. To the shock of no person, Tesla gross sales have continued to fall all through 2025 in an ever- worsening faceplant within the US, Europe, and different key markets.

How Not To Reverse The Tesla Gross sales Slide: Evoke The Jeffrey Epstein Scandal

With gross sales persevering with to crash into the summer season months, Musk needs to be pulling out all of the stops to cease the bleeding. Making an trustworthy try to attraction to feminine automotive consumers can be one approach to go about it. As a substitute, Musk obtained busy enjoying together with his shiny new toy, the AI chatbot Grok.

Final weekend Musk rolled out the beta model of a brand new “Grok Think about” function on X, pitching it as a whimsical, amped-up model of the favored however lengthy misplaced six-second video format Vine.

That appears innocent sufficient. Solely, not. As befits an eight-year-old grownup with all the cash on the earth to spend, Musk greenlighted a “Spicy” mode for Grok Think about customers to get pleasure from.

“In true Musk vogue, Grok Think about guarantees fewer guardrails, extra creativity, and a free-speech-first method. That features permitting semi-nude and sexually suggestive AI-generated content material, even of recognisable celebrities. Which is precisely the place the difficulty begins,” CNBC reporter Pihu Yadav noticed as we speak beneath the headline, “Elon Musk opens Pandora’s field with Grok Think about’s ‘Spicy’ mode.”

If the sex-play surroundings of “Spicy” mode calls the Jeffrey Epstein intercourse crimes scandal to thoughts, run proper out and purchase your self a cigar. It’s all enjoyable and video games, proper? Welcome to the boys membership, step proper in. Now could be the proper time to make an enormous joke out of sexual exploitation, even because the Epstein scandal continues to embroil US President Donald Trump in a crimson sizzling mess.

The Taylor Swift Deepfakes

The Verge reporter Jess Weatherbed was amongst these placing the Beta model of Grok Think about to the take a look at earlier this week, and she or he despatched up a deepfake crimson flag with bells on.

“Whereas different video mills like Google’s Veo and OpenAI’s Sora have safeguards in place to stop customers from creating NSFW content material and celeb deepfakes, Grok Think about is glad to do each concurrently,” Weatherbed reported on August 5, with the emphasis on simultaneous.

“The truth is, it didn’t hesitate to spit out absolutely uncensored topless movies of Taylor Swift the very first time I used it — with out me even particularly asking the bot to take her garments off,” she added.

“This was actually my first try at testing the Grok video device,” Weatherbed emphasised once more for good measure.

Tesla Gross sales & The Return Of The Taylor Swift Deepfakes

Circling again round to that Tesla gross sales image, have a look again at January of 2024, simply earlier than indicators of a slowdown started to appear. That’s proper across the time when Tesla started gearing up for quantity supply of essentially the most testosterone-loaded, street-legal EV available on the market, the Cybertruck. Piling testosterone on high of testosterone, Musk was additionally lastly prepping for quantity manufacturing of the much-hyped, long-delayed Semi Class 8 heavy-duty electrical truck.

With all this male hormone within the background, what ought to leap to the foreground however — you guessed it — Taylor Swift deepfakes circulating on X.

“For nearly a complete day final week, deepfake pornographic photographs of Taylor Swift quickly unfold by means of X. The social media platform, previously Twitter, was so sluggish to react that one picture racked up 47m views earlier than it was taken down,” The Guardian reported on January 31, 2024.

“It was largely Swift’s followers who mobilised and mass-reported the pictures, and there was a way of public anger,” famous Guardian reporter Emine Saner.

“X ultimately eliminated the pictures and blocked searches to the pop star’s title on Sunday night,” Saner added.

There He Goes Once more…

The place to start? Like his on-again, off-again BFF and US President Donald Trump, Musk has proved adept at projecting a public picture of sharp-witted enterprise acumen whereas wrangling an inherited fortune right into a monumental, perpetual slush fund.

Nonetheless, cracks have been showing within the facade of genius-hood. The Cybertruck flop apart, Musk’s tenure as head of Trump’s “DOGE” workplace has been revealed as a large boondoggle. Based on a brand new Senate report, DOGE left US taxpayers holding a $21.7 billion bag — and counting — whereas the workplace additionally savaged the workers at a number of federal businesses, paving the way in which for Musk and his firms to keep away from billions in authorized prices.

Now comes the Grok Think about deepfakes, a tone-deaf transfer if there ever was one. Wasn’t it Musk himself who dipped his fingers into the Jeffrey Epstein scandal barely one month in the past?

“Utilizing his X platform, Musk has been on a posting spree since Wednesday, posting or reposting criticisms of Trump’s dealing with of the Epstein information greater than 35 instances,” ABC Information reported on July 17.

That’s simply the half of it. On July 14, studies surfaced that the Pentagon availed itself of the brand new “Grok for Authorities” suite launched by Musk’s xAI enterprise, beneath a contract value $200 million. No phrase but on whether or not or not the suite features a spicy mode to maintain the boys on process.

Photograph: Through CleanTechnica archive.