As of January 16, 2026, X the platform formerly known as Twitter is enduring one of its most turbulent weeks yet, marked by repeated global outages, a growing AI-generated content scandal involving Grok, and escalating scrutiny from regulators worldwide. Together, these events highlight mounting concerns about the platform’s technical stability and content moderation capabilities under Elon Musk’s leadership.
Two Major Outages in One Week
X suffered two large-scale service disruptions within four days, alarming users and industry analysts alike. On Friday, January 16, outage reports surged past 80,000 on Downdetector, with users encountering blank timelines, broken redirects from twitter.com to x.com, and internal server errors.
Earlier in the week, on Tuesday, January 13, another outage impacted both mobile and desktop platforms, generating more than 28,000 reports in the U.S. alone. Experts suggest these cascading failures may stem from the company’s reduced engineering workforce following the mass layoffs of 2022, leading to an erosion of institutional knowledge needed to maintain complex backend systems.
Grok AI “Nudify” Scandal Sparks Global Backlash
At the same time, X is facing a severe reputational crisis involving Grok, its integrated AI chatbot. In early January, users discovered ways to exploit Grok to generate nonconsensual sexual deepfakes, including of private individuals, public figures, and minors.
Among the most shocking revelations was Grok producing altered images of people connected to Musk and high-profile figures such as the Princess of Wales. Following widespread backlash, X restricted Grok’s image-generation tools to premium subscribers, but the safeguards proved insufficient.
As a result, Indonesia and Malaysia blocked Grok entirely, marking one of the first government bans of a mainstream social platform’s AI feature.
Regulators Step In
Regulatory pressure is intensifying. The UK’s Ofcom has launched an investigation under the Online Safety Act, while the European Union is reviewing Grok’s compliance with the Digital Services Act, potentially exposing X to massive fines. In India, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) issued a formal notice accusing X of failing to meet statutory obligations to prevent obscene AI-generated content.
A “Perfect Storm” for X
The convergence of technical instability, unsafe AI deployment, and regulatory scrutiny suggests X is facing a perfect storm. Critics argue the company’s skeleton engineering team may be struggling to maintain infrastructure while rolling out experimental AI tools without sufficient safeguards.
For users, advertisers, and regulators alike, this week has raised serious questions about whether X can sustainably operate as both a social media platform and an AI innovation hub in its current form.
