An Australian photographer spoke out after Elon Musk appeared to credit the X AI Grok for slightly altered versions of his photos. Charles Brooks made his name by photographing the insides of instruments, creating artwork that makes you feel like a tiny person inside of an incredible structure. Another X user took three of these photos and added little humans using Grok in late May.
He credited Brooks in a comment, but Musk later retweeted the original post and tagged the AI program without mentioning the artist.
“Elon Musk shared my photos without credit”
On June 4, 2025, Brooks posted a video on the r/mildlyinfuriating Reddit sub complaining about Musk’s failure to credit the real artist behind these images. Although he’s not against generative AI programs, he would like a mention for creating the bulk of the artwork that Grok only altered.
Musk shared the post by Eric Jiang from May 31 with text that suggested to his 220 million followers that the AI made the photos entirely.
“Generate images with @Grok,” he wrote.
“That I find a little bit frustrating because, as hopefully most of you know, all of these instrument photos that I take are of real instruments,” said Brooks. “They’re not AI generated at all.”
He explains that Jiang must have asked Grok to put the images of people inside the instruments, leaving the rest untouched. The photographer wasn’t pleased with either party, calling the act of putting his name in a follow-up comment to the original post “disingenuous.”
Brooks is fine with people sharing his art, and even with modifications as long as they don’t use the result for commercial purposes. He just wants credit.
“Put my name in there, drop a link to the website, you know, it’s a really simple kind of copy and paste.”
In a comment on his Reddit post, Brooks added that X suspended his account after he complained. He was reinstated six hours later, but it still seems a bit rude.
The necessity of photography
Brooks goes on to confess that he uses AI himself for things like writing and website building, but not for his art. He says he’s the only person who photographs the insides of instruments like he does, which means that generative AI cannot replicate his work. This technology relies on data scraped from the internet that takes mass amounts of similar images to create a mishmash approximation that appears new.
A lot of people call this a new kind of theft on a mass scale, but Brooks thinks there’s a place for it—as long as folks still appreciate that it can’t do what photographers do.
“It will never be able to photograph or generate an image of a specific instrument,” he says. “For that, you’re always gonna need a photographer, so I think there’s still a place for us photographers to document real things.”
Brooks is at least the only well-known photographer doing what he does. Previously a cello player who participated in orchestras around the world, he started photographing the instrument’s interior full time in 2016. Some of the items he works with are hundreds of years old.
Speaking with the Daily Mail, he said he’d simply like people to put more effort into crediting artists like himself.
“If there’s anything that I would wish out of this it would be that, you know, there’s a way for works or images to always be tracked back to the artist when they’re shared,” he said.
“I think with all of this new technology, if we can trace every bitcoin transaction on Earth, we should be able to trace a photo.”
Could Brooks sue Musk?
Multiple commenters on the Reddit post advised Brooks to speak to a lawyer about copyright infringement, to start. Although Jiang didn’t use the altered photos for profit, crediting Grok could arguably give Musk’s private company a boost. Others mentioned false advertising and even libel.
“Hire a laywer [sic] and sue them for false advertising, libel, and slander,” said u/iamtheduckie. “File a DMCA claim.”
Of course, every purported legal expert on Reddit came to argue about whether he would have a case. Others were simply outraged on Brooks’ behalf, and some simultaneously took issue with his defense of AI.
“I absolutely hate that this has happened to you, AI is a scourge on creatives,” wrote u/MintoMagic. “That’s why I do take some umbrage at your position that there is a place for AI art, because at some point that AI has likely stolen somebody else’s work without credit.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to Charles Brooks for comment via email.
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