X is down after days of chaos with Grok

This illustration photograph shows the logo of social network X (formerly Twitter) displayed on a smartphone in Brussels on September 27, 2024. (Photo by Nicolas TUCAT / AFP) (Photo by NICOLAS TUCAT/AFP via Getty Images)
The platform has been mired by controversy for weeks (Picture: AFP)

X is down, with tens of thousands of users worldwide unable to use the social media platform’s mobile app or website.

Coming amid global outrage over Elon Musk’s AI-powered chatbot generating sexualised images of people, the site crashed at 2.30pm.

As of 3.15pm, more than 20,000 people in the UK have been affected by the outage, according to internet disruptor tracker Downdetector.

When trying to load the X, users are met with a screen reading: ‘Something went wrong. Try reloading.’

The website may also load but will show no posts – some users are claiming it has come back in the last hour before breaking again.

Hundreds are also reporting issues accessing Grok via X. However, the tool’s standalone website, Grok Imagine, appears to be unaffected.

X users in the US, Japan, Australia and Germany, among others, have flagged issues with using the platform in the last hour.

LONDON, ENGLAND - JANUARY 12: In this photo illustration, a screen displays a post by Elon Musk on the X app, showing an AI prompt-created image, made with Xai's Grok app, depicting Musk wearing a bikini, on January 12, 2026 in London, England. Today the UK communications regulator Ofcom launches a formal investigation into Elon Musk's social media platform X regarding its AI chatbot, Grok.??The probe centres on reports that Grok has been used to generate non-consensual sexual deepfakes, including "undressed" images of women and sexualised images of children. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)
The blackout comes amid outrage over Grok’s creation of sexualised imagery (Picture: Getty Images Europe)

The cause of the blackout is unclear, though X was one of many websites disrupted when Cloudflare went down two times.

The software company Cloudflare helps websites secure and manage their internet traffic, so they don’t buckle under demand.

No issues have been reported on the Cloudflare health status website, other than ‘scheduled maintenance’ happening at its St Louis centre.

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